Editorial
CA's intervention welcome
Road digging nuisance to stop
THE directive of Chief Adviser Fakhruddin Ahmed to the ministries that they immediately put a stop to any further road digging in the capital in the monsoon could not have come a day later. How much the public suffering enormously through the indiscriminate road digging activities of the utility organisations craved for a break! They wondered what really happened to the commitment of the Dhaka city mayor during the BNP-led coalition rule that thenceforward no road digging would take place during rainy season.
What seems baffling though, the chief adviser had to at all issue such orders to the ministries concerned viz. Local Government, T&T and Energy when they should have themselves made it a point to formulate, get sanction for, and implement public works projects -- all in the dry season. Equally money disbursement from the finance ministry should have synchronised with a winter season-focused timetable of the ministries. Obviously coordination was lacking.
On another level too, any concept of synchronisation was conspicuous by its absence. This relates to uncoordinated digging by various utility organisations with the result that nearly the whole city is riddled with trenches and ditches, as it were. The DCC which is in charge of filling the roads back in shape could care less. The need for a unified authority is highlighted again.
As it is, midterm reviews of ADP implementation have invariably showed that not until the fag end of a financial year would the ministries shake off their somnolence to try and utilise allocations made to them. Little wonder, therefore, that public works projects are undertaken hurriedly resulting in poor quality work which needed to be mended again and again.
Granted, politicisation of work allotment processes in the past resulted in incomplete projects or wasteful expenditure on public works, but what of now? When an apolitical interim government is on the driver's seat, the ministries should have worked professionally and delivered accordingly, untainted by politics? Perhaps stringent formalities including cast-iron procurement policy had something to do with the delay in undertaking the projects.
The chief adviser has asked to be apprised of the reasons for delay. We endorse his idea of forming a committee to go into the causes of public work projects being dragged into the monsoon. To our mind, the committee should recommend a set of corrective steps so that there is no recurrence of the nuisance under any government.
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