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Safe drinking water disappearing fast in Bangladesh

Extreme weather increases salinity of water in coastal areas while excessive demand in Dhaka leaves dwindling supply
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Syful Islam in Dhaka for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, part of the Guardian Development Network

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 7 May 2013 12.34 BST

Bangladesh drinking water
A Bangladeshi woman queues to collect drinking water from a temple in Dhaka, where potable water is in short supply. Photograph: Pavel Rahman/AP

The availability of safe drinking water, particularly in Bangladesh’s hard to reach areas, is expected to worsen as the country experiences the effects of climate change, experts say.

According to a study by the World Bank’s water and sanitation programme (pdf), about 28 million Bangladeshis, or just over 20% of the population, are living in harsh conditions in the “hard-to-reach areas” that make up a quarter of the country’s landmass. The study found that char – land that emerges from riverbeds as a result of the deposit of sediments – is among the most inaccessible, along with hilly areas, coastal regions and haors – bowl-shaped wetland areas in north-east Bangladesh.

“People living in hard-to-reach areas are often vulnerable to natural calamities like flooding, riverbank erosion and siltation,” said Rokeya Ahmed, a water and sanitation specialist at the World Bank. “As a result of climate change, salinity in Bangladesh’s coastal areas has increased [a great deal], causing a lack of sweet water. Women in coastal and haor areas need to go miles to collect a pitcher of safe drinking water.”

Worsening weather extremes that bring floods, storm surges and cyclones are contributing to increases in water salinity and other problems accessing clean water, the report said. Shahdat Hossain, a grocer in Matlab district, a hard-to-reach area about 50km (31 miles) from the capital, Dhaka, said his town is subject to regular riverbank erosion and flooding.

“Riverbank erosion has turned many people in this area into refugees,” he said. “Since this area is very close to the Bay of Bengal, the amount of arsenic in the groundwater is also very high. We need to dig much deeper to get arsenic-free water.”

Experts expect the struggle to find potable water to intensify during the summer. Shareful Hassan, a consultant on geographic information systems and a researcher on the World Bank study, says surface water sources have already dried up in many parts of the country, which will have a heavy impact on access to drinking water, sanitation and ecosystems.

“In the drought-prone Barind Tract area in north Bangladesh, you have to dig more than 350 metres to get safe drinking water,” he said, adding that the situation is expected to worsen because unusually low rainfall in the area means underground aquifers are not being replenished.

Disappearing groundwater

Even in Dhaka, people have been reporting dwindling water supplies. Eftekharul Alam, an engineer for the Bangladesh Agricultural Development Corporation, said groundwater levels in the city are falling drastically as a result of excessive extraction to meet its growing needs.

Dhaka’s underground aquifers are usually recharged with water that percolates underground in nearby districts, but the levels of underground fresh water in those districts have also dropped, allowing seawater to start seeping into the aquifers. If this continues, experts say, Dhaka’s drinking water could become increasingly undrinkable.

According to Ainun Nishat, a climate change expert and vice-chancellor of Brac University in Dhaka, rainfall across Bangladesh has halved and become more unpredictable over the past five years. That has led to problems including growing salinity in groundwater.

“Salinity in the water of coastal areas has now reached over 20 parts per thousand, but the human body can only tolerate five parts per thousand,” he said.

Nishat says the best option for drought- and saline-prone areas is to preserve rainwater in artificial ponds and distribute it to communities. He agrees with other experts that the government must turn to technology to provide drinking water.

Filtration and desalination plants are expensive, but experts say they offer the only chance to avert a looming crisis. Nishat suggests installing sand filter systems, in which hand pumps are used to suck water from artificial ponds through a filter that makes the water potable.

For those living in hard-to-reach areas, the search for a solution has become a matter of urgency. “We now frequently face cyclones and flash floods which cause the swamping of croplands by saltwater and put us in danger,” said Shafiqul Islam, a farmer in Barisal, a southern Bangladesh district that the World Bank study categorised as “extremely” hard to reach. “Our lives are under severe threat. Getting safe drinking water has become a big challenge.”

• Syful Islam is a journalist with the Financial Express newspaper, published in Dhaka

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8 May 2013, 6.42am EST
Howard’s End: how the coalition’s last budget created the ground for the current deficits

The good times are over. That’s the message both parties are sending out ahead of the budget and September’s election. Shadow treasurer Joe Hockey promises major cuts to spending and welfare if the coalition is elected while the government, having been forced to walk away from its budget surplus promise…

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Phil Lewis

Professor of Economics at University of Canberra
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Phil Lewis does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article. He also has no relevant affiliations. During his career he has received funding from many private and public sector organisations including most recently the ARC, NCVER, DEEWR and the AFPC.

The University of Canberra Provides funding as a Member of The Conversation.
canberra.edu.au

38zfgh4n-1367750818What sort of economic legacy did the long-serving Howard-Costello prime minister-treasurer double act really leave? AAP/Alan Porritt .

The good times are over. That’s the message both parties are sending out ahead of the budget and September’s election.

Shadow treasurer Joe Hockey promises major cuts to spending and welfare if the coalition is elected while the government, having been forced to walk away from its budget surplus promise, is now cutting previously guaranteed benefits like increases in family benefit payments.

The focus on these sorts of welfare cuts begins the dismantling of policies that were central to John Howard and Peter Costello’s budgets, especially the pair’s final big-spending 2007 budget bestowed generous tax concessions – in areas such as superannuation – and transferred income to families that came to be dubbed “middle class welfare”.

In my comment piece on last year’s federal budget for The Conversation I began with the proposition that “good policy should be free of surprises”.

Although governments need to pay for additional expenditure promises – like Gonski and the NDIS in this case – there is also the need to address the underlying structural problem of reducing existing expenditure when revenues fall.

All this is at a time when the carbon tax, the mining tax – and just about every tax – is not raising the expected revenue, and Treasury’s forecasting performance is not looking good.

The point is that fiscal policy should be made in the context of a long-term vision for the economy. This includes getting everyone who wants to into work, providing the public infrastructure needed to increase productivity, the right mix of private and government provision of health and education; and reform of the regulatory environment. We should see clear lines being drawn between the major parties with regard to their philosophy. However, in recent decades we haven’t seen much of this.

Under John Howard, the Liberal-National Party coalition government sought to position itself as good economic managers in contrast to Labor. It recorded budget surpluses after 1997-98 in every year except one (2001-02), with surpluses reaching around 1% of GDP during its fourth term. The record economic growth led to huge windfalls in receipts from company income tax.

Falls in unemployment, jobs growth and wages growth greatly increased personal income tax receipts. While government expenditure as a proportion of GDP was fairly stable, albeit rising slightly, this has to be seen in the context of a switch from public provision of services to private provision. Consequently, there was less provision of government services but increasing government expenditure.

In the 2004-05 federal budget, treasurer Peter Costello announced the baby bonus, a lump sum payment of A$3000 to parents receivable after the birth of each child. It has since risen from A$3000 on commencement on July 1, 2004, to A$4000 in 2005 and to A$5000 on July 1, 2008, and is indexed to inflation. Wayne Swan subsequently reduced the baby bonus to A$5000 from September 1, 2012, and to A$3000 for second and subsequent children from mid-2013.

In the same budget there were other significant increases in benefits to families with children as well as tax cuts for all Australians. As more than one commentator pointed out, there was an incredible degree of giving with one hand and taking away with the other with inevitable administrative cost and waste.

The biggest single item of government expenditure is on social welfare. The majority of the recipients are middle income households due to the generosity of family payments. In 2007, even families with A$100,000 in income were eligible for child support. In effect, what the Howard government built up is a system of massive transfers from middle income taxpayers back to middle income consumers. It might well have been more efficient to let these middle class households keep the money instead of paying extra tax.

In 2007, during the election campaign, further planned personal income tax cuts of A$34 billion over five years were promised by both the Howard government and matched by the ALP, with the ALP firmly in its policy-copying “me too” election mode. The result of policy-matching meant that the Howard Government effectively locked in the next government into their tax reforms including raising tax thresholds and reducing the top tax rate of 45 cents per dollar ultimately lowered to 40 cents per dollar.

Significant changes were also made to superannuation policy in 2007. The majority of workers could now withdraw their superannuation tax-free after upon reaching the age of 60. Most self-employed can claim their superannuation contributions as a tax deduction. In addition, semi-retired people can continue to work part-time, and use part of their tax-free superannuation to top up their pay.

Despite the relatively generous tax treatment of capital gains, the new superannuation tax treatment led to the selling off of some assets, particularly rental housing, as people sought to take advantage of the opportunity to add funds to their superannuation accounts and claim them back later tax-free.

People were allowed to transfer up to A$1 million into their superannuation accounts before the June 30, 2007, after which an annual maximum of A$150,000 of after-tax contributions could be made. The effect of this change in the rules was enormous. In the June quarter of 2007, A$22.4 billion was transferred to superannuation accounts by individuals. This compares with A$7.4 billion in the June quarter of 2006. June 2007 was the first time in Australia that member contributions exceeded employer contributions.

Treasurer Wayne Swan will deliver what is likely to be the Gillard government’s last budget in difficult economic circumstances. AAP/Dean Lewins.

There was criticism of the tax and spend policies of the Howard government: much of it focused on the apparent generosity of the taxation cuts and income transfers to families. The policy was also seen to be in contrast to the generally accepted role of fiscal policy to dampen spending in times of economic boom. Giving tax cuts in 2007 and beyond coincided with a time when consumer spending was considered to be running too high.

The biggest criticism of the Howard government’s generous spending was its concentration on consumption rather on improving the supply-side of the economy.

Productivity growth had slowed considerably during the fourth term of the Howard government. Many areas of Australia’s infrastructure were showing signs of much-needed reform to enable the continuation of productivity growth and economic prosperity. Rail and road transport, ports, broadband speed, water and energy emerged as needing quite urgent reform. It has to be said, however, that the ability of the federal government to address infrastructure problems was hindered by the lack of a working relationship with state governments.

It is ironic that the big spending of the Howard government didn’t save it from losing the 2007 election to another supposed fiscal conservative, Kevin Rudd. Indeed, it could well have been that his fiscal prolificacy played a part in Howard’s election loss as voters lost faith in his economic credentials.

The Gillard government is now living with the legacy of two previous prime ministers but her own government’s economic management has played the major part in her inevitable election loss. Next week’s budget will do little to repair her reputation with voters and, in their current mood, is likely to damage it further

Lake council to work with insurers

By DAMON CRONSHAW Lake Macquarie Reporter
May 6, 2013, 10:30 p.m.

WATERFRONT: Sea-level rise is not behind the massive insurance premium hikes some lakefront properties have faced recently, according to Lake Macquarie City Council.
WATERFRONT: Sea-level rise is not behind the massive insurance premium hikes some lakefront properties have faced recently, according to Lake Macquarie City Council.

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SKYROCKETING insurance premiums for houses would be tackled in Lake Macquarie with a city council plan to work with the insurance industry to reduce prices.

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Lake Macquarie council has dismissed suggestions that massive premium increases are linked to its sea-level rise policy, which the industry has confirmed.

A council report said a Valentine resident had complained that homes and contents insurance, with flood cover, had risen from $927 in 2011 to $3104 last year – a 334 per cent increase.

The Insurance Council of Australia said premiums for homes and contents in coastal NSW had soared by up to 50 per cent in the past two years.

This was not because of climate change, but a trend towards building big, expensive homes in less intelligent ways and in highly hazard-prone areas.

Sea-level rise was ‘‘not covered and not considered’’ in premiums, an Insurance Council report said.

Lake Macquarie mayor Jodie Harrison said premium price rises reflected new insurance policies for ‘‘full flood coverage’’, increased costs for reinsurance, and recent floods and bushfires in Queensland and Victoria.

The council report said household coverage for ‘‘riverine flooding’’ had been available in Australia only since 2007, in response to government and community pressure.

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Increased premiums had coincided with many councils, including Lake Macquarie, updating their flood plans to include consideration of predicted sea-level rise, the report said.

‘‘Many residents have mistakenly linked the insurance increases to revised flood plans.’’

Cr Harrison said the council would work with the insurance industry to ‘‘ensure that flood insurance premiums are as low as possible’’.

Research shows value of bicycle helmets

Updated: 10:29, Monday May 6, 2013

Research shows value of bicycle helmets

Helmets could be more protective for pedal cyclists than motorcyclists, according to a group of doctors who studied head injuries among people admitted to trauma hospitals.

Cyclists without helmets are 5.5 times more likely to suffer a severe head injury than their protected counterparts, say Dr Michael Dinh and his colleagues from the University of Sydney.

Their letter in the May 6 issue of the Medical Journal of Australia says motorcyclists without helmets are 3.5 times more likely to suffer a severe head injury than those with a helmet.

Costs of hospital treatment for patients with a severe head injury are around three times higher for non-helmeted patients than for those who wore a helmet, the authors write.

‘The protective effect of helmet use with respect to head injury prevention appears to be greater in pedal cyclists compared with motorcyclists.’

The doctors used data from 348 patients admitted to seven Sydney trauma hospitals between July 2008 and June 2009 for their study.

Australia is one of only a few countries with mandatory helmet laws for both pedal cyclists and motorcyclists, but the doctors say there is ongoing debate about the benefits of helmet use by pedal cyclists.

The authors say their findings add to the growing weight of observational data supporting the use of helmets, which should be considered at least as protective for pedal cyclists as they are for motorcyclists.

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Twelve months on and we are still in rail mess

Henry Budd
The Daily Telegraph
May 07, 2013 12:00AM
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Subway Lane Bridge

RailCorp conducted work on the Subway Lane Bridge at Homebush over the weekend / Pic: Stephen Cooper Source: The Daily Telegraph

Emma Martins

Emma Martins was caught up in the slow-moving CityRail chaos / Pic: John Appleyard Source: The Daily Telegraph

ALMOST a year to the day since Transport Minister Gladys Berejiklian announced her “Fixing the Trains” reforms, tens of thousands of CityRail passengers were forced to endure lengthy delays and slow journeys after weekend track work ran overtime.

Many commuters were left wondering what had changed after engineers working on a subway bridge at Homebush failed to complete repairs in time for the busy Monday morning peak travel period – causing chaos across the Sydney railway network.

RailCorp began replacing steel spans of the bridge at 2am on Saturday but “issues arose during the infrastructure works that were not apparent until the demolition works were underway,” it said in a statement.

The upgrade was supposed to be finished by 2am yesterday, but crews were still onsite at 6am, causing massive delays across much of the network that persisted right through the afternoon peak.

It took more than 30 minutes for some services to crawl through two stations on the City Circle as the backlog of trains reverberated around the network. A train breakdown on the North Shore Line and repairs to signals on the South Coast Line only exacerbated the problem.

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Student Chris Riamirez, 22, said his train from Campbelltown to the City at 8am was more than an hour late.

“Half of my class was late and we had an exam this morning so we had to wait for them,” he said.

Delays left TAFE student Emma Martins 30 minutes late to lectures and also stranded her at Central Station at midday as she waited for her train home.

Yesterday’s delays – the 12th major disruption this year – are another black mark for a government that said it wanted to be “a world-class deliverer of rail passenger services”.

Ms Berejiklian launched the Fixing the Trains reforms on May 15 last year, with CityRail set to split into Sydney Trains and NSW Trainslink on July 1.

Yesterday even she was searching for answers, calling RailCorp’s explanation for the delays as unsatisfactory.

“It’s unacceptable that weekend infrastructure upgrade work that was due to finish at 2am went over-time,” she said. Opposition Leader John Robertson called for a fare-free day for passengers to make up for the delays: “This government inherited a network where on-time performance targets were being met on every line … now it is at its worst for at least four years.”

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Vaccine refusers to still claim benefits

Lanai Scarr
The Daily Telegraph
May 07, 2013 12:00AM

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Jo O’Brien

Jo OBrien, and Nichola Mclean of Platinum Pre School back the campaign / Pic: John Appleyard Source: The Daily Telegraph

A LOOPHOLE that allows parents who call themselves “vaccine refusers” to receive family benefits will not be closed amid fears the move could be a breach of anti-discrimination laws.

But the federal government’s refusal to act on the issue, such as stopping the 50 per cent childcare rebate for parents of children who are not immunised, has surprised human rights experts, who say any change to current legislation would not open the door to legal action.

Despite this, childcare centres have been told to be wary of discrimination breaches if they refuse kids who are not fully vaccinated.

SIGN OUR PETITION – NO JAB, NO PLAY

Health Minister Tanya Plibersek’s office said the government would not seek to close the loophole in tax arrangements that allowed “vaccine refusers” to bypass a rule that only allows parents of fully vaccinated children to claim benefits.

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Currently 1.5 per cent of children under seven are not vaccinated because their parents have identified as “vaccine refusers”.

A spokesman for the minister said any such changes could open the government up to anti-discrimination claims.

“Under current legalisation parents/guardians who refuse immunisation on the basis of personal, philosophical, religious or medical belief are still eligible for family payments,” the spokesman said.

“Any consideration of change to the legislation would need to take into account existing anti-discrimination legislation.”

But the Australian Human Rights Commission yesterday said there was “no ground” for discrimination. The NSW anti-discrimination board said it could not see how a change to benefits or excluding non-vaccinated kids from childcare would trigger discrimination law.

Childcare centre owners Jo O’Brien, 39, and Nichola McLean, 40, said they were told by the Childcare NSW service yesterday that they could face complaints under anti-discrimination law if they implemented a no jab, no play policy. They said that when they saw the campaign in The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph they wanted to take action.

SIGN OUR PETITION – NO JAB, NO PLAY

“We were told we needed to check and be very wary because we could be done for discrimination,” said Ms McLean whose daughter Holly, 4, is vaccinated.

Ms McLean and Ms O’Brien co-founded the Platinum Preschools in Sydney’s Randwick and Prestons. They said parents who did not vaccinate were “selfish”.