Four years after the construction of the Padma River guidance embankment, on November 21 last year, the embankment in Ishwardi Sara Union of Pabna suddenly started eroding. The people of the river bank were terrified by this erosion. About one and a half hundred bighas of land was destroyed in the erosion and two and a half hundred meters of char area was lost in the riverbed. Nuruzzaman Biswas, MP of Pabna-4 constituency, Imrul Kayes, UNO of Ishwardi, Mohammad Saifullah, supervising engineer of Pabna Water Development Board and Rafiqul Alam Chowdhury, executive engineer went to see the erosion. After the inspection, MP Nuruzzaman Biswas directed the Water Development Board officials to take effective measures to prevent erosion.
About a month and a half later, on January 2, the erosion of the guidance embankment started again. On January 4, the executive engineer of Pabna Water Development Board and other officials visited the site and said that they would start work to prevent erosion as soon as possible. As part of this, the Pabna Water Development Board has started dumping sand-filled geo-bags in Thanapara, an eroded area of Sara Union, from last Friday afternoon.
Pabna-4 MP Nuruzzaman Biswas inaugurated the sand-filled geo-bag dumping programme in the eroded area at around 5 pm on Friday. Ishwardi Municipality Mayor Ishaq Ali Malitha, Sara UP Chairman Emdadul Haque Rana Sardar, Upazila Vice Chairman Atia Ferdous Kakli, Pabna Water Development Board Deputy Assistant Engineer Delwar Hossain were present on the occasion. According to Water Development Board sources, geo-bags will be dumped at five spots. Each bag weighs 250 kg. It will cost about one and a half crore Tk. Rafiqul Alam Chowdhury, executive engineer of the Water Development Board, said that the work of removing the sand-filled geo sacks was started on the special initiative of the local MP. Geo bag dumping will be done by package. The initial cost for each of the five packages is Tk 30 lakh. He said tenders would be called soon to take permanent measures to prevent erosion.
It may be mentioned that the Padma River guidance embankment was constructed in 2016 at a cost of Taka 200 crore. Residents on the banks of the Padma River in Sara Union panicked as the four-year-old river protection embankment began to erode rapidly. They immediately demanded the construction of a new dam.