THE rainy season is not far away. Whereas two Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) authorities have permitted different utility service providers to dig up road surface without taking into account that it will cause severe waterlogging and traffic congestion. Already the city dwellers experienced huge sufferings on Saturday when several roads went under water after a spell of rain. We fear, this trend would continue in the entire rainy season.
Presently, the unplanned road digging is not only intensifying the traffic jams, but also creating miseries to city dwellers. Despite regular media reports on civic problems, these utility providers have been continuing their digging for various purposes without coordination among themselves. Now digging of Metro Rail Project has made the traffic movement slowest for all time.
We don’t know why utility providers do not start the digging in dry season instead of waiting for monsoon. The budgetary fund is available from July each year. If the planning of the works not delayed intentionally up to monsoon; these could be finished in wintertime. There are widespread allegations that the city corporation officials and other utility providers wait for the rainy season because digging, setting up new pipeline or repair old ones require more cost in this season.
Not only that, it becomes easy for the corrupt contractors and dishonest officials to misappropriate of public fund during the rainy season. Likewise, carpeting of dug roads also becomes costlier while much of the works get washed or damaged in rainwater to be repaired again next year. It’s an open secret that vested quarters are grabbing the public money this way. And it is a common scenario of every year.
Currently, in different city areas the workers are piling up mud on the road narrowing the space for walkers and transport vehicles. Besides, the mud stretches across the roads made it slippery. Such work during the rainy season is highly dismaying particularly when the utility providers have no coordination with one another.
We see that when one finishes, another starts digging causing more suffering to people. We have repeatedly taken the issue to the high-ups of the government. But recurrence of digging facing the monsoon shows again that there is nobody to pay heed to public sufferings.
