Ethnic communities in Cht
Water supply thru gravitational flow system planned
“The three hill districts have long been experiencing drinking water crisis, particularly during the dry season”
UNB
The government has planned to supply drinking water to the ethnic communities living in remote areas of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) through installing a gravitational flow system, an innovative approach to tap the water seepage along hill slopes without using electricity.
Weve already formulated a project to supply water to the ethnic people of the CHT using the gravitational flow system and the project proposal has already been sent to the ministry for its approval, Chief Engineer of the Department of Public Health Engineering (DPHE) Md Wali Ullah told UNB.
Once approved by the Ministry of Local Government, Rural Development and Cooperatives, the project will be implemented in three hill districtsBandarban, Rangamati and Khagrachhari.
Primarily, 50 gravitational flow systems will initially be set up in Bandarban and Rangamati involving around Tk 16 crore.
Under the project, about 3,600 deep tube-wells and a number of community-level latrines will be installed in the region.
Gravitational Flow System is an approach of water supply where gravitational force of nature is used to supply water to the community level. There is no need of electricity to make it operational.
A reservoir is first required to be set up through constructing a check-dam in an up-hill position to store water that seep from hills.
And then the stored water is channeled to a water plant installed in a locality through a pipeline using the natural force of gravity.
Finally, the water is purified in the plant and is dispensed to people directly through taps installed along with the plant.
Nazia Tasmin, a DHPE assistant engineer, said sometimes the water, which is supplied through the gravitational flow system, does not require to be purified since it comes from hills through seepage.
Water is very precious in the CHT region since there is no alternative source to surface water. Groundwater cannot be lifted through tube-wells within miles in many areas since it is not available there due to unique land formation of the CHT.
So, Nazia said, the three hill districts have long been experiencing drinking water crisis, particularly during the dry season.
It is a little bit easy to collect water from surface water sources like canal, spring and river during monsoon, but the scarcity of water turns severe during dry season since most of the surface water sources dry up.
Locals said ethnic women generally collect drinking and household water and they, in many cases, have to walk for miles on hilly uneven paths to patch the water.
The Mro community has already installed a water plant using the gravitational flow system with support from a local NGO.
Kangchag Mro, a 50-year-old ethnic woman of the Mro community at Pledey Para in Rowangchari upazila, said once she had to walk a mile through a rough hilly path for several hours to collect drinking water from springs for her family, but now she collects it from a plant installed in her locality.
