Open manholes turns city roads into death traps [ Tritiyo Matra News ]

Open manholes turns city roads into death traps

Local December 12, 2015

Several thousand open manholes and sewerages without slab have turned many roads and pavements in the capital into death traps.
City planners blame lack of coordination among the agencies concerned for the death traps.
Officials of the Dhaka Water and Sewerage Authority and both the city corporations in the capital said that there were more than 74,000 manholes in the city and about 10 per cent of those remained open.
Officials of Dhaka Water and Sewerage Authority, responsible for capital’s water and sewerage management, claimed that they regularly checked the manholes and replaced the damaged or lost covers.
They alleged that manhole covers were being stolen by mostly addicts and they needed time to replace the lost covers sometimes.
City dwellers in Mirpur, Tejgaon, Nakhalpara, Gulshan, Niketan, Shympur, Shahjanpur, Mohammadpur, Jatrabari, Rampura and many others areas alleged that they found often open manhole on the road for months and no agencies looked after it.
Pedestrians often met accident while drivers especially with small vehicles got trapped in the manhole, they said.
The Dhaka North City Corporation chief executive officer ABM Enamul Haque said that the water and sewerage authority was responsible for maintaining the manholes.
City planner architect Mubasshar Hussain said, ‘The problem lies with lack of coordination among agencies concerned especially between the two city corporation and the water and sewerage agency and it will not be solved until the establishment of a single authority to look after all services provided by nearly 54 agencies in the capital.’
A five-year-old boy, Ismail Hossain Nirab, was declared dead at the Dhaka Medical College Hospital on Tuesday night after he was found unconscious at Shyampur sluice gate near Buriganga river more than four hours after he fell into an open manhole.
Kadamtali police station
officer-in-charge Kazi Wazed Ali said that the boy fell into the drain through open manhole while playing with other kids near Jagarani Club at Shyampur in the city.
Death of five year old child Nirab has yet again sheds light on the urgency for immediate initiatives for covering the open manholes.
The Dhaka WASA deputy managing director (operations and maintenance) SDM Quamrul Alam Chowdhury admitted that sometimes they delayed repairing or replacing the manhole covers because of shortage of manpower and resources.
‘Following the latest incident, however, we have issued a fresh instruction to officials concerned to repair or cover all the open manholes and sewerage,’ he said.
He said that they were also collecting information from different sources to find out the open manholes.
On Wednesday, a deep and narrow manhole was found beside a roadside business establishment on Shaheed Tajuddin Road in Tejgaon. Strong current was seen inside the sewerage from the hole.
‘It remains open for few months and nobody looks after it…We do not know what to do if anyone fell into it like Nirab,’ said Nakhalrapa resident Ali Hossain.
‘Sometimes, wheel of small vehicles especially cars often get trapped in the uncovered manhole,’ said Rizia Begum, who runs a small makeshift shop near an open manhole at Begunbari.
Like Begunbari, open manholes were seen on Tejgaon-Gulshan link road and many places in Mirpur and Mohammadur.
Shewrapara resident Abul Kalam Azad said that sometimes they voluntarily put bamboo stick inside open manhole so that riders or drivers could avoid accident on alleyway.
Earlier on December 27, the locals and volunteers pulled up a three-year-and-a-half boy Zihad in a cage after the fire service abandoned rescue operation declaring that they found nobody inside the narrow 300-feet deep well at Shajahanpur.
Zihad fell into the water-pump well, left abandoned by the railways, while playing with other boys.