Poor road conditions: Clamour and cosmetic improvements

With the holy Eid-ul-fitr remaining two weeks away, the issue of poor conditions of the country's major roads and highways has again come to the fore like the last couple of years. Following a threat from the road transport owners to stop plying their vehicles on the Dhaka-Chittagong highway if steps were not taken within a week to repair the potholes, the communications ministry held last Friday an inter-ministerial meeting to review the road and traffic situation ahead of the Eid. The meeting was informed of a number of measures taken by the relevant agencies to ease the movement of the homebound people during the upcoming festival.
The communications ministry has decided not to allow movement of heavy cargoes barring garments, fuel and perishables for three days before and two days after the Eid. The leave enjoyed by the officials and employees concerned of the Roads and Highways Department (RHD) and the Bangladesh Railways (BR) on the occasion of Eid has been cancelled. The Communications Minister has also assured that all the roads of Dhaka city would be repaired by July 20 next.  All these decisions are aimed at making the journey of homebound Eid-goers comfortable. The relevant agencies say that the rush of passengers on the occasions of the Eid festivals increases threefold. In most cases, the passengers, who use all modes of transports, can hardly escape sufferings involving the journey.
The Eid-goers' sufferings start with their frantic efforts to manage a berth in the outbound buses, trains and passenger launches. This remains a tough job for the number of all modes of transport remains almost unchanged as against the threefold rise in the number of passengers on the occasion of each of the two Eid festivals. They encounter the second and worst bout of sufferings while they are on the move. Those who use buses get stuck up in long tailbacks due to poor road conditions or haphazard plying of vehicles. The ill-fated passengers have to spend hours after hours in traffic gridlock on highways. This has been a sorry tale of homebound people on the occasions of the two Eids observed every year. And the agencies concerned rise from a deep slumber only a few days before the two festivals to rectify the situation overnight.
The reason for the relevant agencies becoming hyperactive prior to the observance of Eid festivals remains more of a puzzle. Millions of passengers using the roads and highways every day have to endure untold sufferings due to potholes and other obstructions to normal flow of traffic. The journey between Dhaka and Chittagong, in normal conditions, is supposed to take five hours, at best. It takes 10 to 15 hours now. The conversion of the highway into a four-lane one has only added to the miseries of the transport owners and passengers. The situation is also identical in the case of most other major roads and highways. If the agencies concerned were a little bit more caring in normal times as they tend to be during the Eid festivals, the passengers' sufferings would have been far less.