The International Farakka Committee on Monday urged the government of Bangladesh to raise alarm over the issue of repeated floods and drought in the country鈥檚 Teesta Basin due to control of the river鈥檚 flow in India.
As many as four successive waves of flash flood have devastated the Teesta basin in Bangladesh this rainy season destroying standing crops and eroding crop fields and homesteads of thousands of families in Lalmonirhat, Rangpur, Kurigram, Nilphamari, and Gaibandha districts.
The same river is rendered dry during the lean season every year when all its water is diverted from Gazal Doba Barrage in West Bengal, India.
Leaders of the International Farakka Committee New York, and IFC Bangladesh, in a joint statement, said that Bangladesh could not remain silent over the man-made environmental disaster that affects life and livelihoods of millions of people in the northern parts of the country.
Dhaka should also take proactive steps to start the process of negotiations for extending the 30-year Ganges Water Sharing Treaty that will expire in December 2026, under a system of integrated basin wide management, IFC said.
Farmers in the Teesta basin areas suffered damage in three waves of flood in August when their transplanted Aman seedlings were submerged and damaged.
The mid-September floods damaged transplanted Aman seedlings again. Erosion of crop lands and homesteads with dwelling houses is colossal.
IFC leaders said that the problem of unilateral water diversion from 54 common rivers can never be solved without raising the issue with India and at international forums to stop the process of ecological disasters already set in motion in Bangladesh.
The joint statement signed by chairman of IFC, New York Sayed Tipu Sultan, its secretary general Mohammad Hossain Khan, chief adviser of IFC Bangladesh Professor Jasim Uddin Ahmad, its president Mostafa Kamal Majumder, senior vice-president Nazma Ahmad, and general secretary Sayed Mahmud Hasan Mukut.