5-hr labour of 4,000 Aila-hit people lost
An embankment repaired in five hours from 8:00am on Friday through voluntary services of nearly 4,000 Aila affected men and women collapsed at 3:00pm on the same day.
According to upazila chairman GM Mohsin Reza, the homeless and half-fed men and women of three unions under Koira upazila came out of their makeshift camps and cyclone centres braving biting cold to repair the Pabna embankment.
They repaired it in five hours with a hope to stop the surging water of the Shakbaria river. They dropped over one lakh sand-filled bags to get rid of miseries caused by the defective embankment.
But to the utter disappointment of over one lakh Aila-hit people, the embankment collapsed due to furious cross current and abnormal high tide of the saline infested river on the same day.
Apart from those who gave voluntary services, thousands of frustrated people simply witnessed with tearful eyes the cruelty of the Shakbaria river, Mohsin Reza said.
Pabna embankment damaged by cyclonic storm Aila and tidal surges, remained unrepaired since 2009 causing untold sufferings of over one lakh people of three unions.
Two thousand metric tonnes of rice were sanctioned by the government for repair of the embankment last year.
Messers AL Mamun Enterprise of Barguna district got the work order to reconstruct the embankment as his firm won tender competition invited by the Water Development Board (WDB) in 2009.
But the contractor allegedly left the site after doing not more than 60 per cent of the work due to reason yet to be known.
Khulna office of WDB again invited the same contractor to complete the remaining work with a revised rate.
Later, from October 23 last year, the same construction firm again started work under direct supervision of the army.
Engineer Akram Hossain of WDB still hopes that it would be possible to complete the reconstruction work of the embankment within next one month.
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