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BOGRA, Oct 28 (BDNEWS): River erosion plays havoc with the lives of people in this region. Several thousand people of erosion-hit villages like Awlakandi, Majhira and Bohail now pass their days in the slum-like dwellings in an inhuman condition.
Lack of hygienic sanitation and drinking water in such congested settlements often cause outbreak of diarrhoea and other intestinal diseases.
Though monga (famine like situation) did not prevail here, lack of work in the lean season pushed the earnings of the landless people to a low-ebb endangering their livelihoods.
Ajgar Miah (38), a victim of erosion by the Jamuna, who had taken shelter at Goshaibari village along the flood protection embankment, could not conceal his agony. The mighty river had swallowed all his land.
Ajgar is one of the many who lost their property in the Jamuna. His last abode was the fourth after being chased away three times by erosion from his paternal village in Awlakandi.
Although once he owned three acres and a herd of cattle, he now earns Tk 60 to 80 as a day labourer moving sand to bear the expenses of an eight-member family.
This is a common picture in the river-eroded belt of Shariakandi and Dhunat upazilas in Bogra.
"The CI sheets of my house were provided by an NGO while others got their CI sheets from different NGO's and from the government," said Jonab Ali (65), once a solvent farmer, pointing at their makeshift hovels.
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