Ineffective moves, insufficient allocations blamed

Sufferings of people and wastage of public money continue as ineffective government initiatives and insufficient budget allocations are creating backlogs in the maintenance of major highways and district roads in the country, said government officials and experts.

Major highways and roads at many places are currently in need of restoration while an initiative to create road maintenance fund has remained only on paper for the past 20 years.

Government officials and experts said that a huge backlog was created due to insufficient budget allocation for the maintenance of roads.

As a result, sufferings of people and misuse of public money continue, said experts.

They also said that the authorities should have ensured dedicated road fund by developing a new approach to face the problem.

As dilapidated and potholed highways and roads have always been a major concern for the authorities, the Road Maintenance Fund Board Act was enacted in 2013.

The law was enacted with the aim to set up a board with a fund for repairing, renovating and maintaining roads and highways under Roads and Highways Department.

The initiative was introduced back in 2001 but it did not move further for failure to determine whether the finance ministry or the then communication ministry would be the regulatory authority, said Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology’s civil engineering department professor Shamsul Hoque.

Roads and Highways Department superintendent engineer of maintenance circle in Dhaka Mohammed Abul Kalam Azad told New Age on July 19 that they were currently working to form the related regulations for the act.

According to the Maintenance and Rehabilitation Needs Report of 2020-2021 for the department, about 19 per cent national and regional highways and district-level roads in the country are in poor to very bad conditions.

The report was published in June this year following a survey conducted by the department on around 19,283km of RHD’s total 22,096km of national and regional highways and district roads to assess the conditions.

The condition of highways and roads, especially in Khulna, Cumilla, Chattogram and Mymensingh zones are in very bad conditions.

Till Sunday, 288km of 82 highways and roads of the department got damaged by flood which has already affected the northern and central districts.

According to the law, the road maintenance fund board will be formed immediately after the enactment of the law.

Seven years passed and the board is yet to be formed which is entitled to collect the fund and use it for repair and maintenance of roads.

As per section 12 of the law, the fund will get money from the government’s grants, foreign governments, agencies or international agencies’ grants and collection of taxes, levies, fees and charges by other authorities.

An official seeking anonymity said that the regulations was yet to be framed as the sources for the fund were still under consideration.

RHD chief engineer Quazi Shahriar Hossain said that highways and roads under this department got damaged due to overloading, floods and other reasons.

‘We have backlog in maintaining roads as the allocation for maintenance remains far short of the demand,’ he said.

According to the Maintenance and Rehabilitation Needs Report, the overall maintenance needs has been found to be Tk 14,622 crore including Tk 727 crore for routine maintenance, Tk 5,855 crore for periodic maintenance, Tk 3,277 crore for partial reconstruction and Tk 4,762 crore for full reconstruction.

The report also says that due to insufficient budgetary provision it was not possible to undertake maintenance programme as per the recommendation of the department analysis which led to the backlog.

In 2019, the budget allocation for Periodic Maintenance Programne was only 53.3 per cent of the total needs of Routine and Periodic Maintenance, it also says.

According to the department in 2020-2021 fiscal year Tk 2,850 crore is allocated in the budget for the maintenance of roads which was Tk 2,270 crore in fiscal 2019-20, Tk 2,300 crore in 2018-19, Tk 2,191 crore in 2017-18, Tk 1,478 crore in 2016-17, TK 1,463 in 2015-16, Tk 1,314 crore in 2014-15 and Tk 1,067 crore in 2013-14 fiscal.

Professor Shamsul Hoque said that roads need maintenance at the right time to reduce cost and backlogs.

‘Without timely and sufficient maintenance of roads, sufferings of people will continue and public money would be spent for nothing,’ he added.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net