Don't let red tape drown our children

As the monsoon peaks, a fatal and entirely preventable tragedy is unfolding across Bangladesh. Between January and June this year, 527 children drowned across the country, according to a report in this daily. With August usually seeing a peak in such incidents, thousands of rural families live in anxiety. Yet, at the time when these families need state support the most, a highly effective government initiative has been shuttered by bureaucratic inertia.

In 45 upazilas of 16 districts, 8,000 community childcare centres and 1,600 Swim-Safe facilities provided a secure environment for hundreds of thousands of children. However, the facilities have remained closed since December because the initial phase of the Integrated Community-Based Centre for Child Care (ICBC) Project ended, and a new Tk 838-crore Development Project Proposal (DPP) sits in the bureaucratic pipeline awaiting approval. It is unconscionable that a life-saving initiative is being allowed to lapse due to red tape.

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Analysis shows that the vast majority of child drownings occur within a few metres of the home between 9:00 am and 1:00 pm—when rural mothers are occupied with household or agricultural work. ICBC centres covered this exact window and, tellingly, not a single drowning death was recorded among those enrolled in the programme. By allowing these centres to close, authorities have left children fatally exposed and placed an unbearable burden on parents. Furthermore, this closure has also abruptly stripped hundreds of local caregivers of their sole source of income.

While it is encouraging that the Ministry of Women and Children Affairs (MoWCA) has proposed a mass expansion of the project, the timing signals poor planning. Even if the Planning Commission approves the proposal immediately, officials admit that procurement and NGO recruitment will take another five to six months. The entirety of the current monsoon season will likely pass without these critical safety nets in place. This gap highlights a fundamental flaw in how we address child drowning. Drowning prevention cannot be treated as a temporary, time-bound development project. It is a permanent, year-round public health threat.

As experts suggest, we must no longer rely solely on time-bound development projects to tackle the crisis. Childcare and drowning prevention should be recognised as essential public services, supported through the government’s regular revenue budget, while development funding should be used to expand infrastructure and drive innovation. In the immediate term, the MoWCA must find an emergency mechanism to reinstate caregivers and reopen existing centres without waiting for a half-year procurement cycle.