Dismal plight of roads and highways
Planning minister AHM Mustafa Kamal, addressing a seminar of the roads and highways department on Sunday, pointed to the dismal state of the country’s roads and highways and expressed his dissatisfaction with the officials of the department. This echoes the dissatisfaction of the people in general. The sufferings and problems faced by the people on the roads and highways have appeared in the media time and again. Interestingly, at Sunday’s seminar, many officials of the roads and highways department were quite vocal in their self-criticism. The question is, will the minister’s dissatisfaction and the official’s self recrimination yield results?
The seminar on constructing quality road infrastructure and the problems and possibilities involved, covered many well-discussed issues. For example, flaws in planning, the short term of the plans, taking up road construction on political consideration, delay in completing projects, inflated costs of road and highway repairs and maintenance, etc. All this is very real. But who is responsible for this predicament? Are they accountable at all? There is no discussion on this matter. The situation will never improve unless there is a practice of accountability.
A Prothom Alo report on Monday pointed to a report of the roads and highways department that said till May this year, 4750 km of roads in the country were in a bad condition. Why are over four per cent of the country’s roads in such a dilapidated state? Why were repairs not carried out in time? Another vital question is, how long after construction or repairs and maintenance did these ruts and potholes appear? Every road and highway should have certain durability. Some should last five years, some ten. But these generally do not last more than two years and then the ruts and potholes appear. Huge amounts of funds are poured in to repair these roads, but they just begin to disintegrate in no time again. This vicious cycle continues, but the roads never improve.
It is said that the quality of repairs and maintenance of the roads and highways is extremely poor. But why? Do those responsible to supervise the world not do their jobs properly? Why should the quality of work be so bad? Complaints flood into the newspaper offices about the poor quality of construction material being used for the roads and highways, but those in charge of the construction seem to be unaware of these discrepancies. The massive corruption in the sector is undeniable and continues unabated.
The corruption and irregularities that have taken permanent place in the sector must be eliminated if the dismal plight of the roads and highways is to be permanently resolved.