Ashfiq Mohammad Khalid, a rice farmer, has been making losses for years. His paddy fields rot from the bottom up before his crop can mature during the growing season.
For Khalid, who lives in the central district of Gazipur, and other farmers along the Balu River, farming is tough. Gazipur is just north of Dhaka, and has become a local hub of mass-produced garments in Bangladesh’s sprawling textile industry. Pollution in the rivers around the capital has reached very high levels.
Farmers claim the indiscriminate release of wastewater from nearby clothing factories has turned the area’s agricultural fields to tar, and causes long-term skin disease.
“I have been suffering from itching all over my body and sores developed on my hands, as I had to work in my paddy field,” Khalid told The Third Pole.
“When farmers hoe and plough land for crop cultivation, it is as if we are digging through tar. There are no fish in the river, because of pollution with toxic wastewater released from factories, mostly those manufacturing garments.”
The area is also facing an acute drinking water crisis, 35-year-old Khalid added.
River pollution
Textiles are an important industry in Bangladesh, with knitwear and other garments accounting for about $44 billion of the total $52 billion it exported from July 2021 to June 2022. Most of…
