Madhumoti erosion threatens Bir Shreshtha museum in Faridpur

The Bir Shreshtha Shaheed Lance Nayek Munshi Abdur Rouf Library and Memorial Museum in Madhukhali upazila is under threat of erosion by the Madhumoti river.

Eroding away different parts the lone road from Kamarkhali Bazar to Gandhokhali, the river has gradually reached within 150 metres of the museum.

Locals said they have been facing immense sufferings as a 300-metre portion of the road was washed away and 250 metres of another road behind the same museum was also washed away by the river in the last 30 days.

About five acres of cropland and three houses were also eroded by the Madhumoti during the same period, they added.

With large parts of the vital road gone in the river and turned unfit for vehicular movement, communications have become extremely difficult for inhabitants of 20 nearby villages, a number of villagers told this correspondent.

Over six thousand residents of the villages rely on the road, total seven kilometres in length, for their daily commute. But now, it has become an arduous task to communicate or to reach hospitals in the upazila or district headquarters with critical patients, as they need to take a long detour through a private orchard, they also said.   

Rickshaw-van puller Gafur Mollah, from Gandhokhali village, said riding the van on unpaved land like the orchard or others' private properties is a highly laborious ordeal.

Another villager, homemaker Salma Begum, said she and her family members were passing sleepless nights, as the river was now only five metres away from their home.

Rouf Nagar resident Miraj Khan said that although cracks have developed in half of his house already and it might be washed away by the river any moment, he cannot afford to remove it.

Librarian Munshi Saidur Rahman of Bir Shreshtha Shaheed Lance Nayek Munshi Abdur Rouf Library and Memorial Museum said urgent measures are necessary to prevent the museum from collapsing into the river.

Bir Shreshtha Shaheed Lance Nayek Munshi Abdur Rouf's sister Zohra Begum, 59, said, "I request our Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to protect the Bir Shreshtha Munshi Abdur Rouf Museum and my brother's ancestral land and birthplace from the erosion."

Contacted, Sultan Mahmud, executive engineer of Water Development Board (WDB) in Faridpur, said they already spent Tk 59.65 lakh to dump sand-filled geotextile bags in a 45-metre-long stretch of the road, but the land there was still washed away. 

They submitted a project proposal, with an estimated expense of Tk 950 crore, under which 14 kilometres of the bank of the Madhumoti river would be fortified permanently with boulders, in order to protect the area as well as the museum, he added.