World Water Day Observed

World Water Day was observed across the country with due importance with the theme ‘Water and Culture’ on 22 March 2006.
Different government and non-governmental organizations along with leading agencies held seminar, symposium, rally, cultural programmes highlighting water issues to mark the day at the district and upazila level.
A seminar on Water and Culture: Where We Are was jointly organized by the Department of Public Health Engineering, the World Health Organization, the Water and Sanitation Programme-World Bank, Unicef and the NGO Forum to mark the day at IDB auditorium in the city. Speakers at the seminar said 2.2 million people across the world die of diarrhoea, cholera and other water-borne diseases each year.
About 1,100 million people are deprived of safe water in the world and two-thirds of them are in Asia, they said. They also said about 90 percent of the victims of unsafe water are children in Bangladesh.

LGRD Minister addressing as the Chief Guest at the World Water Day Seminar 2006 ‘Water and Culture’

The LGRD and Cooperatives Minister, Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan, attended the seminar as Chief Guest while the Chief Engineer of DPHE Khurshed Alam presided over it.
The State Minister for the LGRD and Cooperatives Ministry, Ziaul Haque Zia, WHO Representative Duangvadee Sungkhobol, Cheif, WES, UNICEF Paul Edwards, Team Leader of WSP, World Bank Shafiul Azam Ahmed, Officer-in-Charge of UNIC Kazi Ali Reza, Executive Director of NGO Forum S.M.A. Rashid and Superintending Engineer of DPHE Amanullah-Al-Mahmood also spoke in the seminar. They said the sanitation system of Bangladesh has reached to 68 percent of its population from 34 percent in the past two years and they hoped it would achieve

100 percent success by 2010 and the death rate could be reduced by 55 percent by the time.
Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan said Bangladesh is suffering from acute water crisis at this moment. He alleged that the water crisis was created by the barrages constructed by India on 52 upstream rivers shared by Bangladesh.
He said for those barrages, Bangladesh is not getting due amount of water in the dry season which results in drying up of its rivers and floods in the rainy season.

The New Age, 23 Mach 2006

World Water Day Symposia on Water and Culture: Where We Are Held

To mark the World Water Day 2006 NGO Forum for Drinking Water Supply & Sanitation in collaboration with DPHE, WHO, Unicef and WSP-World Bank organized symposia countrywide namely Dhaka, Mymensingh, Khulna, Jessore, Barisal, Bogra, Rangpur, Rajshahi, Faridpur, Chittagong, Sylhet, Comilla, Tangail and Dinajpur. Representatives from various government organizations, UN-bodies, partner NGOs and Mass-media participated in the Symposia.
Presentations were made in the working session on the crisis of the safe water, water pollution, and its causes and impact on public health, and also on environment, steps to be taken to solve the existing problem in safe water supply for the future and so on.
The Open Discussion Session explored different recommendations to combat the existing crisis in safe water supply.
Rallies were brought out at each of the Regions. Alongside WatSan Demonstration, Cultural Programmes and Art Competitions were organized on World Water Day 2006.

Three Cities Face Huge Shortage of Supply Water

Three major cities of Bangladesh have been facing a huge shortage of supply

water, said figures in the Handbook on Environment Statistics 2005, recently published by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics. The cities where supply water shortage is prevalent are Dhaka, Chittagong and Rajshahi.
The demand for water in the Dhaka city is 176 crore litres a day, but the Water Supply and Sewerage Authority can supply only 150 crore litres.
The demand for water in the Chittagong city is 18 crore litres, but the Chittagong Water Supply and Sewerage Authority can supply only 16.9 crore litres. The Rajshahi residents are supplied with 4.5 crore litres of water a day, but the daily demand is 10.3 crore litres.
The supply water deficit is 5.8 crore litres in Rajshahi, 26 crore litres in Dhaka and 1.1 crore litres in Chittagong a day.
Such a situation forces the residents in the metropolitan cities to collect water from alternative sources.

The Independent 22 March 2006‘Right to Water’ a Human Right

One-third of the world’s population is deprived of the “right to water”, with its profound implications in their daily lives, but the international community is still unable to reach a consensus on this vital issue.
Recognizing the right to water as a human right means ensuring that everybody’s basic needs for water and sanitation are met, above all for the poor and marginalized, the France-based World Water Council (WWC) said in a report published here during the March 16-22 Fourth World Water Forum.
To mark World Water Day on 22 March 2006 the Forum hopes to help shape global strategy to improve distribution and eradicate waste of the precious resource.
After three years of debate since the last WWF meeting, the WWC report signals the “significant support” the universal right to water has drawn from heads of state and government, legislative bodies and civil society in general, the council said.

The New Nation, 22 March 2006

February 2006

March 2006