Editorial
Off-season road digging
Give us a break, please!
That time of the year is here again. No, it's not the monsoon, it is the hyper-activity of various utility services just before or into the rainy season. For the last one week or so, we have been witnessing road digging by different agencies in many parts of the city ostensibly for laying gas connections, sewerage lines etc. But why now? Why was it not undertaken in the dry season? Why not when the roads were originally paved or done up subsequently? It seems like a deliberate lapse designed to keep things messy to do it all over again, not once but repeatedly, as something of a money-spinner. Indeed, the excavation of roads begins at the fag-end of the financial year coinciding with the rainy season. Perhaps the authorities need to complete the projects before they are given fresh allocation for the next year. It won't be too far-fetched to think that the procedure for commencement of project-work takes so long, or is rather allowed to procrastinate so much that it invariably ends up being implemented at a time that causes the worst havoc on and suffering to the city dwellers' lives. Road digging is not only synonymous with traffic jam and water logging, it is also sheer waste of time and national wealth, not to forget the poor quality work as a result of rushing to the finishing line in record time. If one is looking for any monumental evidence of corruption and mismanagement, one has to only plumb deeper into the road digging exercise. Let's not forget that the city corporation is in charge of building, repairing, and maintaining roads. But the thoroughfares get cut, dug, excavated by other agencies at random. Lack of coordination between these physically intertwined functions is not only unheard of elsewhere in the world but is also typical of our self-complicated turf mentalities, not to speak of penchant for corruption. We simply fail to understand why these services are not integrated under one authority in terms of planning and implementation of city development projects. We have heard many a time in the past about coordination between the services; there was even a one-stop cell formed by Dhaka City Corporation to coordinate road digging and repairing, but nothing has changed for the better. Are we to believe that we would be kept only on a verbal diet ad infinitum?
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