RHD repairing highways on its own

Munima Sultana | Published: July 24, 2014 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2024 06:01:00

The Roads and Highways Department (RHD) has taken initiatives to carry out highway maintenance work on an urgent basis on its own, following poor response from contractors in this regard.
Officials said the RHD has already started some maintenance work, like covering up potholes and providing surface coating to the roads and highways.
"In the present circumstances, we've already started periodical repair and maintenance work of all the existing roads, from where we've received reports of trouble," said Road Secretary MAN Siddique.
He said the initiatives have been taken to lessen the sufferings of commuters, as in many cases, the contractors could not carry out necessary repair and maintenance work in time.
However, sources said the decision to undertake renovation work through RHD's own initiatives came due to its failure in controlling the contractors, who were awarded road expansion projects, including the Dhaka-Chittagong and the Dhaka-Mymensingh four-lane projects.
They said the contractors refrained from carrying out regular repair and maintenance work during the time of urgency.
"From the pathetic experiences of the Dhaka-Chittagong and the Dhaka-Mymensingh highway four-lane projects, the decision has been taken," said an official.
He said contractors of the two highway projects, mainly the Chinese firms, refrained from implementing periodical maintenance work from their own fund despite RHD's repeated instructions.
The highway development projects, taken at billions of taka, have become a burden on RHD, as the contractors do not cooperate in carrying out its directives to repair the existing roads, especially during the occasions like Eid, he also said.
"Usually contractors of any development project keep a small amount of money for routine maintenance of the existing roads, which they spend shortly after the project starts. However, when the projects get delayed, they do not follow RHD's instruction to repair specific parts of the roads, for which in most of the cases the roads become deplorable," said a person involved with one of the projects.
Earlier, RHD used to award development projects to the contractors, who were responsible for both the existing and expanded parts of the roads.
In the two four-lane projects, the contractors kept some Tk 30,000 to Tk 50,000 for 'maintenance during construction', which experts said was quite inadequate for the highways, where traffic volume is high and overloaded vehicles can hardly be controlled.