CHANDPUR — The village is called Kathalia. It sits on the border of Kachua and Matlab Dakshin upazilas in Chandpur. Located in the No. 5 Paschim Sahadebpur Union of Kachua upazila, it is home to about 1,200 people, most of whom earn a living as fishermen or farm laborers.
Madhab Sarkar, a 58-year-old fish trader and Kathalia resident, said the difficulty of getting in and out of the village has not changed since his childhood. “Even in old age, in this modern era, this unbearable hardship is the daily companion of the people of our village,” he said.
Kathalia residents have waited a long time without getting a road to their village. The lack of a road has caused them endless suffering, particularly for students and patients who need to travel. Villagers use boats during the monsoon and wade through knee- or waist-deep water at times. In the summer they cross muddy paddy-field ridges.
Several students said they were falling behind in school because there is no road. “We cannot get to our schools and colleges on time,” they said. “In the monsoon we have to cross by boat.” They demanded that a road be built quickly.
Residents said Kathalia had been neglected because it sits on the border of two upazilas. A court case filed by one party had stalled road construction, they said. “Even in the modern era, Kathalia is essentially a cut-off settlement. Many people have come as elected representatives, but no one has come to see our hardship,” residents said.
Alamgir Hossain, the chairman of the local union parishad, said there had been no road in the village for many years. He had recently visited to assess where a road could be built to ease residents’ hardship, he said, but the project was held up because farmers owned the land on both sides of the proposed route and a court case was pending. Efforts were underway with elected representatives in Matlab and Kachua to build the road quickly, he said.
Upazila engineer Abdul Alim Liton said information on road-construction allocations across the upazila had recently been sent to the ministry. If the Kathalia road was left out, a fresh list would be prepared and resubmitted, he said.
Shahjahan Shishir, chairman of the upazila parishad, said he had visited Kathalia twice since being elected. He and his team had suffered considerable hardship traveling there because of the lack of a road, he said. He had installed four solar lights from his personal funds to help villagers move around at night. “The people of Kathalia travel with great difficulty, and we are making a serious effort to ease their suffering,” he said.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report