Munima Sultana
Improvement in the condition of deplorable roads and highways across the country is unlikely in near future also due to carrying out their repair work with faulty planning and mechanism, sector observers opined.
They said Roads and Highways Department (RHD) always remains reluctant in improving its road maintenance planning and execution system by setting priority of the roads and selecting construction seasons.
Sources said although multifarious problems persist in carrying out different kinds of maintenance work properly and timely, RHD always focuses on increasing its budget allocation.
They also blamed the government for rise in gap between demand and supply of budget allocation for the road maintenance work.
"If RHD is given the entire fund it demands, the condition of roads will not improve," said one of them.
He also said due to fault in system, the maintenance work of one season is shifted to another season, making the important national roads and highways more vulnerable.
According to RHD engineers and officials, condition of the roads gets deteriorated every year due to not carrying out repair work timely for inadequate budget allocation as well as for
allowing overloading of vehicles day after day.
People blame irregularities and corruption in RHD in awarding and carrying out maintenance work. But, early monsoon, flood and prolonged flood with excessive rain etc put RHD in a helpless condition to take timely action, they opined.
However, while talking to the engineers, experts and contractors, the FE found factors like faulty planning, delay in giving work order, and lack of necessary equipments and field-level staff are also responsible for the problems, persisting year after year.
RHD officials said they cannot start assessing the condition of roads and highways until September. So it takes two to three months to finalise assessment of loss and repair needs as well as to place demand to the government.
But experts said physical progress of the road maintenance work is supposed to be completed before monsoon. Until the end of February, RHD recorded 40 per cent progress in its highway maintenance work.
Road Transport and Highways Division Secretary Nazrul Islam, in a recent press conference, expressed hope to improve the condition of roads and highways by June, without taking into consideration of monsoon, which usually starts in May.
The construction season from October to February is always missed, the experts alleged.
The road maintenance assessment and demand come from RHD's 10 zonal offices across the country. They collect related information from the circle offices and division offices.
Under each zonal office, there are two circle offices, and each of 64 districts has a division office, except Chittagong district which has two divisional offices.
Each of the division has to cover 400 kilometre length of road on an average. Roads under zonal offices also differ from area to area, according to RHD.
Besides the experts and observers said RHD cannot speed up the progress of road maintenance work for carrying it out fully manually.
Some of the contractors, who get work close to Dhaka district, can manage necessary equipments and machines. But majority work throughout the country is done using unskilled labour and poor equipments, they said.
RHD was once self sufficient with all road maintenance materials and equipment. However, there is a lack of required machines, equipments and tools in most of the RHD offices now, it is found.
Until 90s, the department did not purchase any of its required equipments. According to equipment control division, most of its equipments are procured through Japanese and Russian grants by the end of 90s.
But most of the machines are out of order or often turn inoperative. At present 727 out of its 1,060 machines are in operation.
Once the government's other agencies used to hire RHD machines for their road maintenance work. But due to not focusing on the area, the organisation now has to hire these from others, including private sector companies. They also said there is no plan to equip RHD with modern machines, now being used in different countries.
RHD officials now award road maintenance work to the contractors, who have or can manage the required equipment, according to the clause of tender documents.
Besides, due to lack of manpower, created following stoppage of recruitment of 3rd and 4th-class employees for more than a decade, the RHD offices often cannot assess condition of the roads in a proper way.
More than 7,000 posts remain vacant, as the government could not recruit manpower in those posts for legal complexities. Supportive staff for the RHD field-level offices has not been recruited since 1988-90.
Officials said the number of required staff for RHD has increased manifold, as the entity now has to cover more several thousand kilometres of road than it had to in the 1990s.
Although RHD manages many of the repair work by hiring day labourers or machines through contractors, it takes a significant time to manage those, they added.
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