Villagers in Barguna Sadar upazila have built an embankment through voluntary service to protect their croplands from flooding.   

Fed up with not getting any response from the authorities concerned for years, they finally joined voluntary service to build the embankment last week.

Every year during this season, saline water from the Payra and Khakdon rivers overflowing through Heulbunia canal floods crops on thousands of acres of land in four villages, said locals.

The villages are Amtali, Urbunia, Dakkhin Heulbunia and Heulbunia.

On several occasions during the last several years, the villagers appealed to the upazila parishad and Local Government Engineering Department (LGED) to take steps for building an embankment on the canal but to no effect, said Golam Ahad Sohag, chairman of Sadar Union Parishad.

Finding no other alternative, they went for self-help to build the embankment, he said.

Thousands of people with spades in hand voluntarily joined earth cutting work and built a 50-foot-long embankment on Heulbunia canal last week to protect their farmlands from saline water, said the villagers.

Upazila engineer Shakwat Hossain said they have heard about the problem but it is under the jurisdiction of the Water Development Board.