BMDA ensures quality irrigation services to grassroots farmers

Barind Multipurpose Development Authority (BMDA) ensures quality irrigation services to the grassroots farmers so that they can boost their farm production to meet the country’s demand.

More than 5.25 lakh hectares of croplands have been under irrigation in the country’s northwest region, contributing a lot to ensuring food security through boosting the farming yields.

The huge croplands were brought under irrigation facilities through operating power-driven deep tube wells, low lift pumps and solar irrigation systems almost round the year in all 16 districts under Rajshahi and Rangpur divisions.

BMDA, the largest irrigation-providing state-run organisation in the region, has arranged the irrigation facilities yielding significant success in crop production.

High officials of the public entity revealed this while addressing an institutional public hearing held at its headquarters conference hall in Rajshahi on Thursday. BMDA Chairman Begum Akhter Jahan addressed the meeting as the chief guest with Executive Director Engineer Abdur Rashid in the chair.

Additional Chief Engineers Shamsul Huda and Dr Abul Kashem, Superintending Engineers Iqbal Hossain, Nazirul Islam, Abdul Latif and Mahfuzur Rahman and Deputy Manager Rafiqul Islam also spoke.

Expressing his views Aminul Islam, a farmer of Bidirpur village under Godagari upazila, said they are cultivating three to four crops in a year after the best uses of BMDA’s irrigation at present instead of only single crop around two decades back. In her remarks, Begum Akhter Jahan said the agriculture-friendly present government, led by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, ensuring seed and fertilisers at a fair price.

Around 16,000 people are getting safe drinking water from 420 dug-wells in some of the drought-prone high Barind tracts where the existing shallow and deep tube-wells water technologies are yet to be reached due to various reasons.

She added that the region scored significant progress in the crop production sector following the expansion of irrigation facilities along with supplying water from the re-excavated canals and ponds.

Engineer Abdur Rashid told the meeting that around 1,080 kilometres of underground irrigation pipelines were constructed aimed at reducing the loss of irrigation water by around 40 per cent in the Barind area.

“We have got a plan of elevating the surface water-based irrigation to 30 per cent from the existing 10 per cent by 2030 in order to lessen the gradually mounting pressure on underground water,” he said.