Will their thirst be ever quenched?

There seems to be no let-up in the sufferings of the Hajong people for pure drinking water. The century-old suffering of the indigenous people living in Netrakona's Kalmakanda upazila is yet to be mitigated despite umpteen pledges of the public representatives.

On various occasions, candidates of both national and local polls pledged this indigenous community of easy access to pure drinking water but the pledges were never fulfilled, lamented the locals.

"Though we have long been waiting for an easy source of drinking water for decades, it still seems to be a far cry," said Sajol Hajong, a former member of Lengura Union Parishad (UP).

The indigenous people, mainly the Hajong people, have been living in the bordering villages-- Lengura, Rongchhati and Kharnoi-- for some 400 years but they have never got easy access to pure drinking water, said Sajol.

"We are unfortunate that an available source of pure drinking water, one of the most fundamental requirements, is a far cry for Hajong people in the locality", said Nayem Hajong of village Gopalbari Chengri in Kalmakanda.

The people get a respite only in the rainy season when they can harvest rainwaters for drinking and household purposes, said Nayem, a master's student at Dhaka College.

Still hundreds of Hajong people, mainly women have to cross long distances to fetch water from small springs or wells as there is no source of water near their homes in the bordering villages.

There are around 10 ring wells at Gopalbari Chengri village where more than 70 families live and only three to four wells can supply pure drinking water, Nayem also said.

Some 3,000 Hajong people of the community collect water enduring such plight for years for want of tube-wells or deep tube-wells in their area, said the youth.

The situation turns difficult in the dry season when the flow of water from the springs ebbs and the level of groundwater dips.

As there is no river and canal adjacent to the area, the indigenous people living here are the worst sufferers, said Geetika Hajong, a school teacher.

When the government has been doing huge development work throughout the country and then setting up reasonable numbers of deep tube-wells in this hilly area is not a tough task, said a 45-year-old housewife Gyanota Hajong.

Md Saidur Rahman Bhuiyan, chairman of Lengura UP, said the area is at an end of a slope of the Meghalaya Hills and it is very costly and difficult to set up 1,000-feet deep tube-wells.

Around 50 ring wells have been set up in the union in the last three years from where the indigenous people collect water standing in a queue but the number is insufficient, said the chairman.

Around Tk 10 lakh is needed to install a deep well and it is not impossible if the authorities concerned take the initiatives, the locals said.

Admitting the acute shortage of water in the area, Kazi Md Abdur Rahman, deputy commissioner in Netrakona, said they have already taken a project to install 10 deep tube-wells in Kalmakanda and Durgapur to mitigate the serious water crisis.

The work of the project will start in the next fiscal year, said the DC.