Karima Akter is seen filling up the water jars for customers in the nearby village. Photo: Priyotosh Das/CARE
Imagine not being able to freely drink water, or using the water from the same pond for washing clothes, bathing, and all other daily needs? This is the harsh reality of the people living in the Bagerhat district situated in the Southeast Bangladesh.
To serve a community suffering from water crisis is a rewarding experience. The Community-Led Innovation for Climate Risk Mitigation in Bangladesh (CLIMB) project, implemented by CARE Bangladesh through the partner NGO Rupantar, has come up with a unique intervention called the ‘Safe Water Preservation and Distribution Center’ in the Chalrayenda village of Rayenda Union in Sarankhola Upazila of the Bagerhat district. This is a solution designed to serve the water-deprived community. It is a water purification plant where reverse osmosis technology is used to purify water. The water source is a long canal situated about 300 meters behind the plant, where rainwater has accumulated during the monsoon season. After purifying, this water is distributed to over 200 families in the local community.
The water is not free but is available for a very affordable price of 0.5 taka per liter. Twenty liters (one jar) of clean and pure water costs only 10 taka. Before operationalizing this initiative, representatives from the village community formed a water management committee. The committee's president is a female who received training from the CLIMB project. Her job is to look after the daily operations of the water treatment plant. She starts her work early in the morning and takes small breaks in the middle. She uses a long pipe with a nozzle at its end to pour water into the customers’ utensils.
“I spend almost the entire daytime here to serve the people who come here to take water. People from the surrounding villages and market areas come here. Before this was arranged, the women of the households used to walk for many miles with utensils to carry freshwater from ponds.,” said Karima Akter, Plant Caretaker and General Secretary of Water Management Committee, Chalrayenda village, Rayenda Union, Sarankhola Upazila, Bagerhat.
Some customers come to fill up small bottles, while others come with larger jars. Water is also mass distributed to the locality by means of local transport arranged by the water management committee. A human-driven 3-wheeler cart loads up multiple jars of clean water. In return for a delivery charge, the driver delivers these jars to the recipients’ doorsteps living in the adjacent locality. The affordable price makes this arrangement more accessible to the community, and they rely on this clean water for drinking, cooking, and other household chores.
“The water from this plant is not only used by the local people, but also by local businessmen who collect thousands of liters of water from here and then distribute it to the people living a bit far. There are slightly discounted rates available for high volume consumers and these commercial entities. A percentage of the total sales is used for providing salary to the woman who looks after the plant. Also, high volume consumers get a percentage of the total annual sales as incentive, so they consider this as an investment and take good care of it,” said Nasrin Sultana Mou, Project Officer – WASH, Rupantar, CLIMB Project.
The committee President regularly updates a logbook of the subscribers to keep records of the water she sells in a day. For long-term subscribers, a discount offer is applicable after a few months, and the committee lead also gets a percentage of the profit from the overall earnings. Most of the earnings are spent on regular maintenance of the plant.
This plant has brought a sigh of relief to the inhabitants, changing their lives for the better. It has brought happiness to their homes, saving them from the vicious claw of salinity. It has become a beacon of hope for the local residents, and it deeply resonates a value we teach to children, and also try to embody in our lives – sharing is caring!
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