Billions drained as roads built sans guideline, study

The country incurs an aggregate loss of billions of taka for constructing road network without following proper guideline and conducting feasibility study.
Experts said due to fault in designs hardly any desired benefit is visible from the constructed roads.
Officials of the ministry and department concerned said due to pressure from political leaders, proper planning cannot be followed in project design for road construction nowadays.
They said in most of the cases, ministers, members of parliament and chairmen recommend roads for their respective locality and lobby for their approval.
"If we have to follow the ideal procedure, free from any influence, to plan a project, we have to wait years after years to get approval for it," said an official preferring not to be named.
He said pressure is also visible from project formulation to approval and allotment of fund in the annual development budget.
The Roads and Highways Department (RHD) is responsible for construction of national highways, regional and district-level roads throughout the country, while the Local Government Engineering Department (LGED) constructs village roads.
Of the two agencies, RHD is entitled to follow procedures, like - feasibility study, traffic study etc, while planning a road, for assessing its economic viability.
However, sources said in many cases engineers concerned do not visit the spots and collect traffic data. RHD keeps yearly traffic data through its unit - HDM - to prepare development project proposal (DPP).
A traffic expert said in many roads, traffic volume has been found increased 70 to 80 per cent against the estimation, stated in DPP, because of not taking proper traffic study.
They said to avoid trouble RHD's unit concerned and Ministry of Communication (MOC) show all the 'political' road projects viable.
RHD has already developed a 22,000 km road network throughout the country, most of which are done following political influence. The department has over 120 projects under implementation in the current fiscal year, which are mainly dominated by political leaders, the sources also said.
The Roads Division under MOC now has six more new projects under preparation, all recommended by ministers and MPs of different areas.
Ministry sources said in the last fiscal year, 2013-14, they received 104 new proposals for road construction, most of which are backed by national and local-level political leaders.
They also said due to improper planning and design of the road projects, most of these are getting delayed and have to be revised.
"As the projects are being designed on political pressure, it continues in their approval and allocation of fund in the Annual Development Programme," said another RHD official.
RHD list also shows that 50 per cent of its projects have to be revised for delay in implementation.
Earlier, Roads Division stopped accepting new projects for having a queue of more than 200 projects.