THE Prime Minister, on her return from Thailand, has reportedly directed the ministries that they should get down to taking flood control measures of a permanent nature. In her statement, she stressed river dredging and steps against river erosion. On Monday, while the outgoing Dutch Ambassador called on her she requested the ambassador to urge upon the Dutch Government to help Bangladesh in controlling flood.

However, there ought not to be two views now about where to apply the highest priority in taking durable flood control measures. First of all, the on going flood has showed up very painfully the result of being neglectful about flood control protection for the capital city. It needs no explanation why Dhaka city should receive highest prioritised attention in flood control activities. Apart from being the country's biggest city with a population of nearly 10 million, it also holds the greatest concentration of the country's wealth. It is the heartland of the country's industries and financial sector. It is also the nerve centre of the country's administration and its crippling in any form severely undermines administrative activities all throughout the country.

Dhaka city could have remained flood free during the current flood if it had not been so defenceless without any embankment in its eastern parts. The other parts of the city could largely remain dry because these are served by embankments. Thus, the government should lose no time in building the needed embankment for protecting the eastern parts of the city. A team of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) visited Dhaka last week and offered to extend its financial and other forms of assistance for the fastest building of this embankmut to guard the eastern parts of Dhaka. This offer must be taken up immediately and every effort made at the soonest to start planning for this project and its quickest implementation .

River dredging, as stressed by the Prime Minister, should be carried out. But the dredging activities must not be wasteful like in the past. Dredging activities were quite insufficient and highly unskilled in the first place over the years. And whatever activities were attempted, proved to be rather useless due to corruption. False estimates of dredging were submitted to the relevant ministry to line some pockets and little actual dredgings were carried out. In most cases, dredged sands and mud were heaped high on the banks to again find their way into the rivers after rains. Therefore, dredging of this sort is no answer to the problem of flooding. Dredging activities must be made corruption free and dredged soil and sand must be removed from the banks and used to build roads or embankments and not left at the sites of dredging.

Embankment building and repairing activities must be taken up on emergency basis. Hundreds of miles of embankments have been damaged by the present flood and these should be immediately repaired and repaired very well before the arrival of the next wet season. Besides, the embankments also need to be made higher. The national highways need to be built well above the highest flood level experienced so far. Therefore, more capable embankments and much more efficient dredging will surely lessen the effects of floods.

Massive flood control activities may not be desirable in view of the peculiar ecology of Bangladesh where limited flooding is seen as having some positive effects. But the above minimum of durable flood control activities are a must after the very shattering experience of the present flood.