About 1,000 students, teachers, and guardians have been facing severe inconvenience due to waterlogging on the field of Dewhata AJ High School under Mirzapur upazila.

The school, located near the Dhaka-Tangail highway, goes under water even after a light shower. The educational institution, founded in 1970, has 975 students.

Khorshed Alam, headmaster of the high school, said: “The problem of waterlogging started three years ago when work on the four-lane Dhaka-Tangail highway began. A four-storey building was also built for the school with the money received for the acquisition of a portion of its land for the highway construction work.”

“The school field remains under water even after at a light or moderate rainfall. The waterlogging hampers sports, assembly, classes and other activities of the school,” he added.

A guardian told this correspondent: “The kids might suffer from skin diseases as they have to walk through polluted and stagnant water every day during rainy season.”  

Khorshed Alam said, “I have written to the education minister, local lawmaker, upazila parishad chairman and chief engineer of the four-lane highway project explaining the problems. But nothing has been done yet to resolve the problem.”

President of the school managing committee, Siddiqur Rahman, said: “We talked to the local MP, Alhaj Md Ekabbar Hossain, about the waterlogging problem. He said it’d take some time to resolve the problems as it involves construction of a separate lane for slow-moving vehicles beside the highway. Fresh land will also be acquired.”

Local people also demanded an early solution to the waterlogging problem in the school field.