Unheard Voices

Watching news lately has become an emotional trial – I want to know the progress of salvage and rescue efforts in the aftermath of cyclone Sidr at the same time watching the unspeakable sufferings of the victims has become unbearable. A father standing alone washing dead bodies of his two Sons (about the age of my own Son) before burying, a mother crying her heart out after losing everybody in her family and her home and wondering why she was spared and confused about how to carry on, a boy weeping uncontrollably after losing his siblings and parents baffled not to find the only refuge he has seen in form of his loving parents. The story goes on and more clips get aired as the harsh reality gets uncovered and captured through the lens of flocking news crew and cameramen.

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I still remember my late Mama’s voice in a phone conversation in the late nineties when he told me that now we will just have to say Bismillah and drink the water here. He was referring to the higher than acceptable arsenic concentration in the drinking water from groundwater sources in Bangladesh that was discovered earlier and widely “acknowledged” around that time. Groundwater contamination by arsenic at such high quantity is not just happening in Bangladesh, it is also happening in India, China and in other parts of the world. In fact, worldwide 140 million people, especially in the developing countries, are at risk of arsenic poisoning through drinking water.

So far, we have been hearing mostly about the risks of water with high concentration of arsenic on people and what may be causing it and how many lives maybe at stake. The burning question of how we divert this inevitable calamity went unanswered for too long. The government and international organizations kept pondering upon the question giving no priority and significance to the issue. Even the organizations that initially funded the tubewell project to tap into the groundwater for drinking, where the root of the problem goes back to, failed to recognize and work towards diverting the catastrophe until many years later.

Do a chemistry professor named Abul Hassam, an expatriate Bangladeshi, finally have the answer that will provide a simple yet affordable way to avert what he calls the arsenic poisoning of drinking water “one of the worst natural disaster on earth”? Will Abul Hassam, named this year “Heroes of the Environment” by Time, with his solution save millions of lives of his fellow Bangladeshis as well as millions more elsewhere in the world? Read more about it in Time magazine.

Saudi Arabia executes 3 Bangladeshis
Agence France-Presse . Riyadh
Three Bangladeshis were beheaded in Saudi Arabia on Friday after being convicted of robbery and sexual assault, the interior ministry said. Thakeer Abdul Rahman, Tafeel Abdul Rasheed and Nayoon Jowley were executed in the kingdom’s capital city Riyadh for breaking into the home of a fellow Bangladeshi, robbing him at knifepoint and sexually assaulting his wife, the ministry said in a statement carried by the official SPA news agency.

Many questions come to my mind,
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