NATIONAL
HSC candidates walk through waist-deep water to reach exam centres in Cumilla
HSC candidates in Cumilla waded through waist-deep floodwater after heavy rain to reach exam centres, raising safety and fairness concerns.
FARABI SAIFULLAH
Collected
BIONIC READING
In a Nutshell:
- Between 6am and 9am on 13 July, Cumilla recorded 107mm of rainfall, flooding large parts of the city including the areas around the Education Board office, Women's College, Victoria College and Cumilla Medical College Hospital, and leaving exam-day roads knee to waist deep.
- Families and school officials bear the brunt of the crisis, as candidates are forced to navigate hazardous, waist-deep waters to reach flooded examination centers, leaving guardians and teachers to manage extreme logistics and safety risks amid forecasts of continuous heavy rain.
- With water waist-deep even around the relatively elevated Women's College centre, some candidates crossed by boat and others waded through to reach their halls.
Why It Matters
This is less about a single wet morning and more about a routine, predictable failure colliding with a high-stakes national exam. When a few hours of rain can cut off exam centres, the problem is the drainage, not the weather.
- It underscores a systemic failure in urban planning, where routine seasonal rain immediately transforms city streets into dangerous waterways, halting economic and civic activity.
- While student organizations and anxious guardians are actively demanding an immediate postponement of public exams due to safety and inequality risks, the government has yet to announce a suspension, leaving families caught in an unfair compromise between physical safety and academic futures.
- A candidate who could afford a boat or reached a dry centre sat calmly, while one who fell in a drain or arrived drenched did not compete on equal footing. In an exam that shapes university admission, that uneven playing field can follow a student for years.
What We Think
The state postponed exams in flood-hit Chattogram this week, so the real question in Cumilla is not whether a pause is possible, but why these students were left out of it.
- The Inter-Education Board Coordination Committee postponed the HSC and equivalent exams for 13, 15 and 16 July across the Chattogram Board because of the flood situation, so the mechanism to pause an exam clearly exists and has been used this very week.
- The result is that the burden falls on the students. On one of the most decisive mornings of their academic lives, they were left to board boats and risk a soaked admit card, while the one decision that would have helped, a timely postponement, never came for them.