Don't lease out water bodies

Jahangir Alam lives off Boro farming in Sunamganj for around seven months. For the rest of the year, he and his family subsist on fishing from the haors.

This year however will not be the same. Floods in late March and April inundated the croplands, destroying the Boro right before harvests. Afterwards, fish and ducks died in huge numbers.

For Jahangir, the only way to make ends meet now is to catch and sell whatever fish is left in the waters. But it is no easy task considering the fact that there are around six lakh people in the same quagmire as his, as per the district council chairman.

This has led Jahangir and most of the residents of Ghagtia village to demand a stop to leasing out of water bodies, at least for this year, considering the adversities they are facing.

A platform advocating for saving the haors, Haor Bachao Sunamganj Bachao Andolan, and Sunamganj District Lawyers Association support them. There are reports of some organisations sending a memorandum in this regard to the prime minister.

Sources in the district administration say there are 1,119 water bodies.

The size of each of 418 of these water bodies is above 20 acres and they are leased out by the district administration and land ministry for three and six years respectively usually around the Bangla month of Chaitra.

The sources say most of these 418 water bodies have been leased out, leading to the government getting around Tk 17 crore in revenue, and the land ministry is processing papers for the remaining 44.

The current state of 625 of the water bodies, which are each below 20 acres in size and leased out by the upazila administrations, could not be know.

The remaining 76 of the 1,119, small in size and adjoining riverbanks, are open for all. Jahangir says the 76 are not stocked enough to meet the demand.

Moreover another villager of Bishambharpur upazila, Mubarak Hossain, accuses some of the leaseholders of forcibly occupying the free-for-all water bodies adjoining those they took lease of.

"Leaseholders will soon be appointing armed guards. What will we do?" Jahangir told this correspondent.

Samsul Mia of the same village says people in haor regions do not have food in their homes and at intervals passing days on empty stomachs. He says they would have nothing to turn to if the leases are not cancelled for the year.

Nirmal Bhattacharya, a local leader of the farmers, says the demand was not new and that the rights of the fishermen existed only on paper. He too demanded opening the haors for those affected by the floods.

Deputy Commissioner Sheikh Rafiqul Islam believes the 76 open-for-all water bodies were enough to meet demands. The decision on continuing leasing out water bodies was for the highest level of the government to take, he added.