Shahzadi is visibly exhausted fetching three pitchers of water for her family. But she cannot rest at 11:00am. The 13-year-old must report to the tailor she works for as an apprentice.
It has now been a routine work for Shahzadi. Residents of Chaitaly Road at Second Colony beside Mirpur Mazar Road has not got a drop of water from Dhaka Wasa in the last 26 days.
“It takes about an hour to bring a pitcher of water from Tolarbagh on foot,” Shahzadi said. Her family does not afford transport costs.
Rickshaw-puller Mohammad Rafique does the same thing after coming back from work at noon.
“I have to bring about 10 buckets of water every day from a distance of about one kilometre to meet the emergency need of my family,” he said.
About 7,000 people live in 30 pigeonhole-type houses at the colony, said Dipa Akhter. The owner of house No 66/A/A joined her neighbours Thursday for the first time because she could not hire any people to bring her water.
The hard-pressed residents repeatedly informed Dhaka Wasa of their problems.
“Wasa told us they will give us water every alternate day, but we have not got a drop of water since the first day of Ramadan,” Moulana Obiadullah, owner of house No 45/3, said.
“We have been through the crisis for about eight years now. Two years ago the house-owners chipped in with Tk 2,500 to set up a new pipeline. We then got kind of relief for the next two years,” Dipa said.
But the crisis began coming back in the past one and a half months back.
“We now bring water from Tolarbagh, Dakkhin Bisil and Turag River spending Tk 70-80 every day per family,” she said.
“Rain is a blessing…we can at least fill our pitchers,” she added.
The executive engineer for zone 4 of Dhaka Wasa, Wahidul Islam Murad, refused to talk to this correspondent.
Md Masud Khan, commissioner of Ward 10, said three pump houses located in Lalkuthi under ward 10, Dakkhin Bisil under ward 12 and Gollartek under ward 9 supply water to the Second Colony.
But the water does not reach a big chunk of Chaitaly Road due to low pressure in Wasa pipeline caused mostly by frequent power outages.
He said Rajuk recently gave a piece of land to Wasa to set up a pump house.
Work on the pump house will be complete in one and a half months, he said.
The Chaitaly Road residents must bear with fetching water until then at least.
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