Agriculture Minister Matia Chowdhury yesterday blamed donor agencies for arsenic menace, a growing threat to the public health in the country.
"Indiscriminate installation of shallow tube wells for irrigation caused desertification in one hand and increased the magnitude of arsenic on the other," she said.
The donor agencies are responsible for the arsenic menace that has taken a serious turn, she said while addressing a workshop at Spectra Convention Centre at Gulshan in the city.
Centre for Environmental and Geographic Information Services (CEGIS) organised the workshop titled 'Paradigm shift in agriculture: an energy saving perspective'.
She said many seminars and workshops are being held on it, people from the government and non-government agencies are going abroad while overseas experts are coming to this country to address the issue.
"But, we should take our decision in our own and set our duties as per the capacities," she said suggesting that the problem should be addressed on the basis of local knowledge.
Two researchers of the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology found presence of up to 0.3 milligram of arsenic in per kilogram of paddy grown in their research site in Munshiganj district due to extraction of underground water for irrigation.
At the workshop, Matia came down heavily on the country's water management system and said the rivers of the country were killed over the years in the name of river training and all the governments are too responsible for it.
The minister emphasised producing all varieties of rice to cut dependency on dry season boro rice that requires more underground water for the irrigation.
It is possible to get good amount of aman rice on uplands if supplementary irrigation can be put in place, she said.
The speakers emphasised using surface water for irrigation to reduce dependency on underground water.
They called for improving irrigation management system, saying farmers now use around 3,000 litres of water to produce a kilogram of rice while it is possible by 1,000 litres of water if proper management is ensured which eventually saves energy.
Ehsan Hafiz Chowdhury, modeller and director, Database and IT Division of the CEGIS, and Ahmadul Hassan, water resources planner and director of Research and Development of the CEGIS, presented two separate papers on efficient use of water and energy in rice production.
Shaikh Md Wahid-uz-Zaman, secretary to the water resources ministry; Habibur Rahman, director general of the Bangladesh Water Development Board; Dr Wais Kabir, executive chairman of the Bangladesh Agriculture Research Council; Ad Spijkers, country representative of FAO Representation in Bangladesh; and Giasuddin Ahmed Choudhury, executive director of the CEGIS, among others, spoke at the workshop.