A country of countless rivers, Bangladesh is set to build a database of all the rivers across the country by June-July this year in an effort to identify the rivers facing serious problems and thus save those.
The national river conservation commission (NRCC) has taken up the initiative involving the administration at division, district and sub-district levels.
“We’ll present the problems to the taskforce on river protection and it will take steps to solve the problems,” said NRCC chairman M Ataharul Islam.
He added, “The committees that have been formed at the divisional, district and sub-district levels of the administration will hand over the database of all the rivers to us by June or July.”
Divisional commissioners will lead the divisional committee, while deputy commissioners the district one and sub-district executive officers the sub-district committee.
Ataharul said the sub-district committee will make a list of rivers under their jurisdiction in details and prepare a file identifying the problems of those rivers.
After the profiling of the rivers and identification of their problems, the sub-district administration will try to solve the problems, he said.
If the problems cannot be solved with the intervention of the sub-district administration, a file in this connection will be sent to the deputy commissioner while the district committee will refer the unsolvable problems to the divisional commissioner, he noted.  
From the division level, the problems will be conveyed to the NRCC.
The NRCC chairman said information collection on the rivers has already begun across the country. It will recommend the government to recover and reserve the rivers that have been grabbed by occupants after the compilation of primary information.