Water shortage : Living hell in Dhaka 
Bangladeshi soldiers distribute water in East Rampura in Dhaka. Bangladesh deployed the army to guard water pumps in the capital Dhaka after acute shortages triggered widespread protests, an official said. -- PHOTO: AFP
* The capital needs 2.2 billion litres of water a day, but the city's water authorities can supply just 1.9 billion litres, according to official figures, with many public pumps operating below capacity because of the gas shortage.
* With the city's 550 public pumps struggling to meet demand, the army was deployed last week to protect 'key installations' including water treatment plants, said Taqsen Khan, chief of Dhaka's water supply authority.
* Bangladesh's gas supplies, crucial for cooking, running cars and generating electricity, are also massively overburdened - with demand of 2,400 million cubic feet of gas per day and supply of 1,900 million cubic feet.
* Dhaka University geology Professor Humayun Akhtar said the current reserves of 7.7 trillion cubic feet will run out by 2020.
* Last week, the government tried to defuse widespread unrest and protests by diverting gas from industrial use to power plants, which led to a record of 4,600 megawatts of power against demand of 5,300 megawatts. -- AFP
DHAKA - DHAKA-BASED housewife Mamota Begum cannot even boil the dirty, malodorous water that - occasionally, if she's lucky - trickles from her taps as there is not enough gas to power her cooker.
Dhaka's rolling electricity blackouts, which hit every other hour, also mean Ms Mamota, a 26-year-old mother of two, has no light to help her children with homework or power to watch television, so they often just sit in their living room, sweating in the dark. 'Everyone in my family is getting skin diseases from the foul-smelling tap water. My children won't drink the water, and I cannot cook decent meals because of gas shortages,' Ms Mamota, whose husband is a civil servant, told AFP.
This South Asian nation of 144 million people is experiencing what one newspaper called 'the world's worst peacetime utilities crisis,' with power, gas and water shortages driving even middle-class residents such as Ms Mamota to despair. 'Our life is hell,' she said, a sentiment shared by many of Dhaka's 13 million residents, thousands of whom have protested against the chronic utilities shortages in the streets, prompting the government to scramble to respond.
Dhaka has a daily shortfall of 2,000 megawatts of power, which is half of the entire country's average daily production. -- AFP
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