The problems of water salinity

A woman filling her container from an unsafe water source

Credit: WaterAid / Joe Downie

On World Water Day, 22 March 2007, Shajeda Begum, a programme officer with WaterAid, discussed the joint problems of scarcity of safe water and problems of salinity in the coastal belt of the country.

In Assashuni and Shyamnagor upazilas under Satkhira district, water salinity is making the lives of people miserable. Women, regardless of their social, economic or physical status, are the worst sufferers.

People here have been facing the hard reality of drinking saline water for decades. The situation has become worse with the introduction of shrimp farming and the consequent intrusion of brackish water far inside the coast.

As a result, salinity has seriously affected ground water. Finding no alternative, most people now use bacteriologically unsafe surface water.

A team from WaterAid in Bangladesh conducted a sample study in these two upazilas to form a general idea of the problem and, in particular, to explore the situation for women. The main objective of the study was to investigate the social and physical consequences of using saline water in daily life for a long period on the human body, especially among women.

During the focus group discussions, a total of 297 participants said that they had been using saline water for the last 20 years as the surrounding water bodies were affected by saline intrusion due to shrimp cultivation. They have generally been using saline water for all purposes, including drinking (although there were a few exceptions in the case of drinking water).

The study investigated four main areas:

1. Social consequences:
Women and adolescent girls are usually required to collect drinking water from distant sources. This may take three to four hours a day. As a result, they do not have enough time or energy to carry out other household duties like cooking, bathing, washing clothes, taking care of elders, etc.

When they go out to collect water, women and adolescent girls are sometimes harassed by boys and men. The women and girls therefore feel uneasy and threatened while collecting water from distant sources.

The skin of adolescent girls becomes rough and unattractive due to the use of saline water. Men from outside the area do not show their interest in marrying these young girls. Even within the area, girls from poor families are neglected by the rich families.

2. Economics:
When a poor family cannot afford to collect water due to sickness or because it does not have any member in the family to do the job, they have to buy water from water vendors at Taka 10 per pitcher. It is very difficult for them to spend Taka 300 per month for drinking purposes as their monthly income is typically Taka 500 - Taka 1500. Therefore, sometimes they have no choice but to use saline water for drinking purposes. Furthermore, females are the prime consumers of saline water within their family.

3. Agriculture:
Over 30 per cent of the net available cultivable lands of Bangladesh are located in the coastal areas. But this land is not being utilised for crop production, mostly due to soil salinity. Soil salinity is now considered a major constraint to food production in coastal areas.

4. Physical difficulties:
Every person in the study was found to be suffering from one or more saline water-related disease.

Women and adolescent girls are affected by gynaecological problems by using saline water during menstruation. Women, explaining their bitter experiences about menstrual hygiene management, reported that saline water creates pain during menstruation. The used clothes become hard after drying (due to the water salinity), which creates discomfort when next used. Further use of the same hard clothes can create genital injury, including bleeding, infection and other complications.

Various NGOs are working hard in the area and they have tried various approaches to address the salinity problem. The pond-sand filter method has been found to be quite effective. However, it is not available in all places.

This is an edited version of a story first published in New Age.
The full version can be read here.