Of Damaged Roads
The Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) has asked for a government grant of Tk 153 crore for repair of the city's roads, lanes and bylanes. Already Tk 30 crore has been allocated for the purpose. One-third of this amount has been earmarked for repair of the most important roads and streets that pose a serious risk to the movement of vehicles. Now the question that troubles us is, why should city roads expose its vulnerability to a few days' rains? Admittedly intermittent rains cause some damage to the surface of roads; but should that create pot-holes of death-trap proportions before the rainy season is over? Two things must be responsible for the woeful conditions of the roads we are daily stumbling into: either sub-standard construction materials were used for carpeting them or the routine repair works were not carried out at all, and if done, they were done perfunctorily or not in time. We understand the need for emergency repair, but when most of the city roads call for such urgent attention, even the contingency plan or measures cannot cope with the situation. This is what has exactly happened. A report says that the DCC spent only Tk 90,000,000 on this head last year and without much of a plan. This year, too, the whole summer has gone without anyone showing any concern for this issue. Now that the roads are showing potholes and other major damages , the DCC has suddenly sprung into action. This being the rainy season, there is a serious doubt about how effective the repair work will be. That means quite an amount will once again go down the drain simply because of the choice of a wrong time for the job. We do not know if there is problem in funding the yearly repair works but we can realise that the planning for the job is suffering due to lack of coordination. We suggested through this column that an effective coordination among various metropolitan agencies is needed to avoid overlapping activities. A coordination committee came into being all right with the city mayor and the LGRD minister acting as co-chairmen. However, we cannot say that this has made any significant difference in putting their acts together. So, we suggest that the committee for coordination of the city's development programmes meet more frequently for doing the jobs better and much more efficiently. The routine and recurrent repair works may not be as spectacular as the overbridges or underpasses, but without them every other development project of the city is reduced to nothing. Much as we want the required funds to be made available to the DCC so must their utilisation be as corruption-free as possible.
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