Flood-hit Sylhet people face drinking water crisis

The lack of safe drinking water has added to the suffering of the flood-affected people in Sylhet city.

Electricity was disconnected in most parts of the city at 11:30am Friday and the houses affected by flood ran out of water by the afternoon.

The supply of drinking water to the local shops has reportedly been stopped. City dwellers are not even getting candles in the stores.

At night the areas plunge into darkness for lack of power.

Dr Mahbubul Hakim, associate professor of economics at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, who resides on the third floor of a building in the city's Kumarpara told The Business Standard over phone that water supply has been disrupted in the area due to a power outage.

"Though I am still not worried about drinking water as I had stored some while other household works are being hampered due to lack of water," he said.

Zahiduz Zaman Shopon, section officer of Army Institute of Business Administration - AIBA, Sylhet who resides in Uposhohor area near Surma River, said the ground floors of all the buildings have been inundated and every household in the area is facing an acute water crisis.

Abu Mosa Tarek, assistant professor of English at Bianibazar Government College, said the biggest problem in this flood is water crisis due to lack of electricity.

He said that many people were having problems cooking as the supply of LP gas cylinders was also cut off.

Over 10 lakh people in Sylhet city have been marooned, while thousands of others affected, by the worst flooding in the country's northeast in nearly two decades. 

The latest floods in Sylhet division have broken all previous records, says a press release by Mostafa Kamal, PhD researcher on weather and climate at Saskatchewan University, Canada.