Proper road maintenance essential
Sunday, 31 October 2010
Habibul Hasan
ROADS are considered to be vital for the economy's growth and development. Roads are at the heart of marketing or distribution activities in any economy. Transportation costs of goods are very important in determining the competitiveness of different economic enterprises. While this factor calls for maintaining a large network of roads, that alone will not deliver, if the roads are not usable due to insufficient maintenance. A big part of the expanded road network unfortunately falls in this category of improperly maintained roads.
According to one estimate, the absence of regular maintenance activity alone costs the country in the neighbourhood of $1.0 million every day in terms of the depreciated value of the roads from wear and tear. No estimate is available for the compound loss that occurs from slowed down movement of vehicles, their depreciation from moving on pot-holed surfaces, delays caused to businesses from inability to reach goods in time, etc. But these estimates, if taken for a period, say even a day, would very likely show up a very large figure.
Thus, regular road maintenance needs to be ensured through proper plans and their implementation for competitive and cost-efficient operation of the economy. The government should attempt to set up a 'road fund'. At present the government allocates too inadequate an amount of money for road maintenance. Besides, this allocation cannot be also spent in time with best effects because of the present mode of spending through coordinated activities of the Ministry of Communications, Roads and Highways Department (RHD) and the Ministry of Finance.
The road fund can get around several problems including delays and corruption and inadequacy of funds. The suggestion is to beef up the road fund by raising greater resources from road-users through direct fees, tolls, licence fees, etc. Even foreign aid to the sector may be routed to this fund. The fund should be placed under the RHD for spending from it directly.
In this way, both funds for maintenance should rise as well as the capacity to undertake immediate works on detection of poor road surfaces or even anticipatory advanced works on this ground. RHD with an autonomous status and the road fund under its control, should go for annual regular maintenance of the roads than the present system of as and when the need arises.
The RHD should also aim to make the road-users responsible by actually discouraging at field levels overloading that leads to faster crumbling of the roads. This would also require effective cooperation of the traffic police in this matter.
ROADS are considered to be vital for the economy's growth and development. Roads are at the heart of marketing or distribution activities in any economy. Transportation costs of goods are very important in determining the competitiveness of different economic enterprises. While this factor calls for maintaining a large network of roads, that alone will not deliver, if the roads are not usable due to insufficient maintenance. A big part of the expanded road network unfortunately falls in this category of improperly maintained roads.
According to one estimate, the absence of regular maintenance activity alone costs the country in the neighbourhood of $1.0 million every day in terms of the depreciated value of the roads from wear and tear. No estimate is available for the compound loss that occurs from slowed down movement of vehicles, their depreciation from moving on pot-holed surfaces, delays caused to businesses from inability to reach goods in time, etc. But these estimates, if taken for a period, say even a day, would very likely show up a very large figure.
Thus, regular road maintenance needs to be ensured through proper plans and their implementation for competitive and cost-efficient operation of the economy. The government should attempt to set up a 'road fund'. At present the government allocates too inadequate an amount of money for road maintenance. Besides, this allocation cannot be also spent in time with best effects because of the present mode of spending through coordinated activities of the Ministry of Communications, Roads and Highways Department (RHD) and the Ministry of Finance.
The road fund can get around several problems including delays and corruption and inadequacy of funds. The suggestion is to beef up the road fund by raising greater resources from road-users through direct fees, tolls, licence fees, etc. Even foreign aid to the sector may be routed to this fund. The fund should be placed under the RHD for spending from it directly.
In this way, both funds for maintenance should rise as well as the capacity to undertake immediate works on detection of poor road surfaces or even anticipatory advanced works on this ground. RHD with an autonomous status and the road fund under its control, should go for annual regular maintenance of the roads than the present system of as and when the need arises.
The RHD should also aim to make the road-users responsible by actually discouraging at field levels overloading that leads to faster crumbling of the roads. This would also require effective cooperation of the traffic police in this matter.