RHD staff protest transfer of roads to LGED
Staff Correspondent
Hundreds of Roads and Highways Department (RHD) staff yesterday staged a protest at the Shaheed Minar demanding withdrawal of the government decision to place 9,000 km of RHD roads under the Local Government and Engineering Department (LGED).They claimed that the LGED lacks technical expertise and equipment for their maintenance. They also said a section of the officials of the Physical Infrastru-cture Division (PID) of the planning ministry was behind this move. According to a suggestion of the World Bank (WB), the PID initiated a study to classify the road network of the country a few years back. After the study, the PID classified the roads into six categories -- national, regional, district, upazila, rural and union levels. The national, regional and district roads have fallen under the RHD and the rest three under the LGED. Officials of the RHD alleged that the PID did not properly conduct the study as no opinion was sought from technical experts. "The LGED is supposed to maintain the roads that are linked to upazila from rural areas as lesser number of vehicles with low loads ply these," said a RHD engineer to The Daily Star. "The RHD maintained the district-to-district and upazila-to-upazila roads as high load carrying vehicles ply these," he added. "Considering the RHD's technical expertise and equipment, the government gave the responsibility of maintaining these bigger roads to the department," said the engineer.
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