KAMALPUR, May 26 (TIWN): The change of climate and ever increasing greed and lust of human already casted a heavy toll on the rivers of the state. The Howrah river already became a matter of deep concern.

But what remained out of observance or concern of many was the fate of the river Manu flowing through Unakoti district and providing water and abundance of fish to the habitats around it.

The 167 km long flow emerged from the Sakhan range and joined the Kushiyara river at Manumukh in Bangladesh. The river passed through gorges and valleys in the state and as it advanced towards the plain land became wider and slowed down comparatively.

Still almost a decade ago the river was treated a constant source of water and fishes. And with this notion many water treatment plants were built up depending on the river.

But during some recent years some slow but steady and significant changes started to be seen in the nature of the river. The people who used to earn their livelihood from the river and those who used to keep a close contact with the river noticed those changes.

While interacting with TIWN many river-side dwellers, fishermen and those people who noticed the river from their birth till date expressed their concern. One Abdul Matlib of Kailashar expressed that, he had seen the river from his early boyhood. The river became wider in all those years. But the pace got slowed down significantly. At the same time the amount of alit deposit of the river also increased significantly.

Another fisherman from Kumarghat who used to catch fishes from the river almost every day namely Samir Das expressed his anguish that the number of fishes decreased significantly in the river. He told that, “During the rainy season the fishes remain available in huge quantity. We can easily maintain our life by selling those fishes. But during the rest of the year the abundance of fish in the river Manu remains only a distant dream.”

Not only those, but occasional floods, breaking of banks, sand bars at places in the river also made the river something unfamiliar to those who had born and brought up with the river.

Many educated people of the locality expressed their view that, the building up of water treatment plants at different places, building of dams for irrigation, illegal lifting of sand and the decrease of trees at the source started to cast its toll on the river.

Now, if the government and the environmental organizations not became keen to look into the problem soon, then it would bring a great danger in future.