Poor conditions of city roads

The country's important highways are in a bad shape. This situation has amply been highlighted by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in one of its recent reports. Nearly 73 per cent of national highways in Bangladesh, as noted by the ADB, do not meet the international standard. Hence, the quality of construction of roads and highways and their maintenance are an issue that deserves priority attention of the policymakers. Meanwhile, the conditions of roads under two municipal corporations of the capital city, run by bureaucrat administrators, have alarmingly deteriorated. Bureaucrats in fact can never be suitable replacements for the people's elected representatives. However, it is not that the roads of Dhaka City are specifically in poor conditions. Others towns and cities are also encountering the same problem.

Here, 'pitiable' will, perhaps, be too soft a word to narrate the conditions of a good number of widely-used city roads. This word is, in fact, an understatement to describe the actual state of these roads that are more than unfit for use by both pedestrians and vehicles, manual or motorised. Potholes of various depth and size do dominate such roads. Under the ongoing spell of monsoon rain, the situation has only worsened further. The potholes beneath the stagnated rain water have become hidden traps for manually-driven rickshaws in particular for they very often turn upside down with passengers on board.

Some of the pothole-filled roads lie along the route of an under-construction flyover running through Maghbazar, Malibagh, New Eskaton and Mouchak areas of the capital city. For understandable reasons, these roads have become unfit for smooth movement of traffic. A large number of wide and deep holes have been created in the middle of these roads to construct piers for the flyovers with the help of heavy machinery and equipment. The situation actually demands closure of such roads to traffic. But the authorities concerned have kept the same open taking into consideration the state of affairs concerning traffic movement in Dhaka city.

But the reasons for many other roads remaining in a terrible shape are altogether different. Indifference on the part of the two city corporations in northern and southern parts of Dhaka respectively, to regular maintenance of roads other than those used by the so-called VIPs (very important persons) remains a major problem. But at least two other reasons are obviously linked to the road-related plights of the city dwellers. These include the poor quality of road construction and the city's poor drainage system. A newly carpeted city road can very rarely endure the onslaught of more than one rainy season mainly because of poor quality of work. Graft and highhandedness by the vested interests are to blame for it.

The drainage system built along most city streets unscientifically, in most cases, cannot flush out rain waters. Moreover, the surface drains usually remain clogged due to the dumping of garbage of all sorts by residents. Thus, stagnant rain or waste water oozing out of sewer system causes severe damage to the bituminous roads. The city corporations are not equally attentive to the pliability of all city roads. This was true even before the bifurcation of the Dhaka City Corporation (DCC). This situation has thus been persisting for too long a period. The city dwellers would like to see an early end to it.