'Dredge Kobadak to mitigate sufferings of 14 lakh people'
One of the participants ends token hunger strike by taking juice, right, women at the programme held at Shaheed Abdur Razzak Park in Satkhira town yesterday to press the demand for dredging Kobadak River. Photo: STAR
Several hundred people staged 'token' hunger strike and held a rally in the town yesterday demanding immediate steps for dredging silted up Kobadak River to solve the perennial waterlogging problem to mitigate sufferings of 14 lakh affected people in Satkhira, Khulna and Jessore districts. The Kobadak River Khanan Bastobayan Committee, a body floated by local people to press home the demand for dredging the silted up river, organised programmes at Shaheed Abdur Razzak Park. Women and children also joined the hunger strike that continued for three and a half hours from 11:00am. Later, the committee held a rally on the Shaheed Minar premises with its president Principal Safiqul Islam in the chair. Awami League (AL) lawmaker and chairman of the parliamentary standing committee on communications ministry Engineer Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Satkhira district AL General Secretary Nazrul Islam, advocate Abdur Rahim, Satkhira Press Club President Abu Ahmed, Public Prosecutor (PP) Mostafa Lutfullah, advocate Abul Klam Azad, freedom fighter Morol Abdus Salam, and Principal Enamul Haque addressed the rally, among others. The speaker said Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at a rally at Shyamnagar upazila headquarters on July 24 last year assured the people that her government would take steps to solve the waterlogging problems in Kobadak basin by re-excavating the river, but no step has been taken yet. Waterlogging due to massive deposition of Kobadak River is causing damage to crops and dwellings, much to the suffering of people in vast areas of the three districts, the speakers said. They said encroachers have built houses, shops, clubs, factories and fish farms on thousands of acres of newly emerged lands on the banks of the river while so-called fish farmers often set up bamboo barriers there, hastening death of the river. The speakers urged the government to take immediate steps to dredge the river and free it from the illegal encroachers.
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