The streets of Shantinagar, Maghbazar-Eskaton and Panthapath-Tejgaon areas become unfit for use if there is little rain. Some commuters talking to this correspondent said potholes and heavy construction equipment of the construction firm of the Maghbazar-Tejgaon fly over on the roads at the construction sites, have made the situation all the more deplorable.
While people generally blame utility service providers, like Wasa and Titus gas, for digging up roads, it is actually the city corporations which are responsible for restoring the roads.
Zahangir Alam, Chief Engineer of Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC) talking to The New Nation on Thursday said as natural drainage outlets have mostly been filled up, the fund allocatted for maintenance work is not adequate. Unless there is meaningful improvement of the drainage system, road repair work won’t substantially improve the situation, he said adding coverage of drainage is far from satisfactory. The DSCC annually gets an amount of Tk. 70-80 crore for maintenance of roads and drains, he said. The completion of city’s drainage net work , he said would require an estimated fund of Tk. 600- 700 crore stretching a period of three-four years, he felt.
Barring the major ones, the condition of most roads, lanes and by-lanes, particularly those in the city’s periphery, are in very bad shape, this correspondent found during a visit. The busy Kalshi road at Mirpur which has to bear additional pressure of traffic after the opening of Mirpur-Banani fly over, is also in deplorable condition. There are potholes at different points of the busy thoroughfare causing sufferings to commuters. Occasionally, the city corporations put a few poor quality brickbats into some road potholes, pours a small quantity of bitumen on those and levels the same with a roller. But such repair hardly lasts and the roads return to their original conditions, it was found.
The quality of road maintenance work of the city corporations, particularly in Dhaka city is very poor in most cases. Since most part of the fund allocated for the purpose is allegedly misappropriated by a section of corrupt officials, contractors and politically influential people and a small amount is actually spent on road maintenance work, some city dwellers alleged. Moreover, most roads do not have surface drains on both sides, making the roads vulnerable to accumulation of rainwater and their consequent damage, they said.
The Dhaka City Corporation (DCC), which is now divided into two parts, never paid due attention to the quality aspects of roads, they pointed out.
Despite the fact that city dwellers had never been happy with the quality of service delivered by the DCC even prior to its spilt into two, they could, at least, manage necessary papers from the ward commissioners. But, these days, the sufferings of the people have only multiplied in the absence of elected representatives, they observed.
For instance, the Dhaka north city corporation without having any sort of consultation with the residents, has hiked the holding tax. Even it has given the hike a retrospective effect from the last quarter of the last assessment year (2012-13), which is very much arbitrary, they said.
The administrators, heading two city corporations, also admitted that their appointment for a maximum period of six months, has turned out to be a stumbling block to ensuring better civic service to the residents of Dhaka city. The six-month tenure of an administrator expires before he/she can have the full grasp of the situation, prevailing in the area under his/her control, they said.
One professor of civil engineering at Buet, said the delay in repair work of roads is deliberate with a corrupt motive, as it allows widening small road cracks into gaping holes and entails sizeable repair expenditure.
The larger the expenditure, the bigger the opportunity for misuse of funds since maintenance work has no engineering drawing, he said.
Restoration of a road after letting gaping holes to develop is a contractor-oriented approach and is not an engineering practice, he said, adding that the professional approach to deal with road damage is to arrest cracks before they turn into gaping holes. Road maintenance and repair work should be done during winter , he said.
A road is supposed to have a 15-year life without the kind of deep pothole damages that people experience regularly.A road is built layer after layer of soil foundation, base of brick chips and sand and finally bituminous surface, he said. But dug-up portion of a road is repaired by directly filling up the trenches with sand, without using a trench compactor. As a result, improperly compacted road are weak and break down soon.
Ansar Ali Khan, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of DSCC expressed his disappointment over lack of coordination among different agencies. He said as per a government circular road digging should be suspended for from April 30 to October. But on different pretexts it is ignored. City corporations, he said should be run by elected mayors who would remain accountable to the city dwellers, he said.
One engineer of Dhaka North City Corporation requesting anonymity, said, “Repair work is delayed because it takes time to bring the matter to our notice and as a consequence the potholes keep getting bigger.” Refuting the allegation that the engineers deliberately let the potholes widen, he said, “Wide potholes require more expenditures which reduce the chance of monetary misappropriation.”
