Archive for South Asia

Cyclone and drinking water problems in coastal area of Bangladesh

Md. Shahidul Islam

There is a proverb that ‘’water water everywhere but not a drop of drinking water.’’ This proverb was 100% proved in last cyclone SIDR and Aila. It was a serious problem in the affected areas. Due to cyclone, water contaminate in different ways. All latrines became open and human manure mixed with the flood water. All ground water mixed with river/sea water and became saline water. Even all small water sources became polluted by falling different trees and leafs and turned into black polluted water. It was raised a very inhuman situation when there were no source of water even after three days of cyclone SIDR. Hundreds of children were became sick and died by drinking extreme contaminated water. On the other hand it was very tough to bring fresh water from other parts of the country. Because the whole transport route were devastated and there was no way to move by any vehicles.  Read more...

Bangladeshi poor 'beyond the razor's edge': UN food agency

Millions of impoverished Bangladeshis are barely sustaining a hand-to-mouth existence that would be wrenched from their grasp by any fresh “economic shock,” according to the UN food aid agency.

World Food Programme (WFP) country head John Aylieff said two million children aged under five in Bangladesh are suffering from acute malnutrition, which by World Health Organization standards represents a “nutritional emergency.”

“The population is beyond the razor’s edge, so that any other economic shock is going to have an immediate and direct impact on malnutrition,” Aylieff told Agencies.

Bangladesh was cushioned from the worst ravages of the global financial meltdown, but experts warn remittances and exports  Read more...

Ship recycling leaves tide of death on Asia's beaches

In the searing heat of a July morning, 13-year-old Sultan Nasiruddin Molla set off for his first day of work on the seemingly endless stretch of muddy coastline in Chittagong, Bangladesh, where young men armed with wrenches and blow torches swarm like ants over rusting skeletons of beached ships.

Sultan, excited at the prospect of joining the world of grown-ups and earning his first working wage, never made it back home. Hours after signing up to join the rag-tag brigade of workers dismantling a 5,000-ton vessel with a scrap value of more than 4 million US  Read more...

Climate change is a battle for existence in the Maldives

Among the many grim predictions of climate change experts, the future fate of The Maldives stands out as a genuine doomsday scenario with the island chain nation facing nothing short of extinction.

A one-metre (3.3-foot) rise in sea level would almost totally submerge the country’s 1,192 coral islands scattered off the southern tip of India. Experts predict  Read more...