City roads in disarray
We want durable solution
The sorry tale of the city roads has been told over and over again and yet the latest one goes beyond comprehension. The roads with water filled craters, potholes and wide cracks cancel out the claim of the city fathers that they have given the city of Dhaka roads it deserves as the capital of the country. Any such claim would fall flat on its face as roads remain conspicuously and hazardously unsafe for motorists and pedestrians with various agencies tearing it apart round the year. And rainwater remains clogged on the main thoroughfares for days together thereby damaging the roads even further. We wonder why the authorities cannot maintain roads that cover only 6 per cent of the city's total land area whereas ideally it should have been 25 per cent.
We believe no story on the bad roads of the metropolitan city will ever be complete without mentioning the role of the Dhaka City Corporation (DCC). Evidently, these roads are constructed with poor quality materials and the technology that is followed is also obsolete. The roads are hardly maintained properly and repair works is not done in time to avoid greater damage. Furthermore, there are allegations that whatever little money is allocated for repair work most of it gets eaten up by a nexus between DCC officials and contractors.
It may sound amazing but according to DCC, there are 180 potholes covering about 2766.58 square metres of road surface in Uttara alone. This clearly speaks of the conditions prevailing in the rest of the city. What adds to our dismay is that even the engineers of DCC claimed that the bitumen layer of the roads got washed away by rainwater because of faulty drainage system. Here the question that crops up is, did not the engineers know that rain is an integral part of this tropical country's climate and that roads should be built accordingly so that these do not get easily damaged after a little rainfall.
Now that the damage has been done what the authorities need to do is take immediate and effective measures to repair the damaged surfaces to make the roads usable once again. But before undertaking any measures we feel a task force should be given the responsibility to take stock of the situation and suggest sustainable solutions. The DCC also needs to establish a mechanism so that all utility service agencies work in coordination with one another to avoid damaging the city roads.
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