Twelve percent Bangladeshis at arsenic risk: LGRD Minister

The local government and rural development (LGRD) minister has said that 12 percent Bangladeshis are at risk of arsenic poisoning.

Replying to a question in Parliament on Saturday, Minister Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain also highlighted the steps the government had taken to reduce the risks.
 
New York-based group Human Rights Watch (HRW) recently in a report accused the government of failing to ‘adequately respond’ to the problem that ‘kills an estimated 43,000 people’ each year.
 
The LGRD minister, however, had rejected the report as ‘baseless’.
 
The report detailed a 2013 national survey of drinking water and said around 20 million people were still consuming water with arsenic concentrations above 50 μg/L, the safe water threshold in Bangladesh.
 
Later, the British medical journal backed the HRW report and urged the Bangladesh government to take actions.
 
“Until all Bangladesh's citizens have access to safe water, their right to health will remain scandalously denied,” it said.
 
The minister in the Parliament on Saturday said the government had tested five million tube-wells in 2003. Of them, 29 percent were found with arsenic contamination.
 
He said in villages a safe water source had been created for every 88 people to reduce the arsenic risks.
 
The coverage of water supply was increased to 88 percent from 82 percent while over 200 villages were brought under piped water coverage through different projects, he said, replying to the question of MP Didarul Alam.
He also informed the house that the Department of Public Health and Engineering created 300,000 water sources and 210,000 of them were installed at arsenic prone areas.
 
Replying to a question from MP M Abdul Latif, the minister said they had taken a master plan to make Dhaka a modern city by 2040.