Editorial
Road-digging, an insufferable problem
Something must and can be done about it
City thoroughfares which are a public property seem to have been given in perpetual lease to Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) and the variegated utility service providers to do as they please. Otherwise, how are the citizens, supposed to use them for free movement, are being mute sufferers of the hardship caused by the deeply dug in road sections nearly all over the city in the monsoon season? Dhaka has become a city of watery trenches now causing not only obstruction to traffic but also hazards to life and limbs of people. As it is, city life is bedeviled by traffic congestion and water-logging and how much more such problems are worsened by the free-for-all road excavations.The onset of the rainy season is marked by the road digging hyper activity through a conspiracy of factors which are evidently man-made and therefore eminently avoidable. Funds have got to be utilised by the end of a financial year that these have been allocated for or else they are lapsed. Non-completion of the preparatory work by the agencies and bureaucratic red tape delaying the release of funds, it is usually in the month of June, at the fag-end of a fiscal year, that the project work actually taken up. For all we know, Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) has to be approached by the utility agencies for permission to dig roads to lay their cables along with expenses paid to DCC for filling up the excavated roads. So, there is a lever in the hands of DCC to ensure compliance with the rule set in 2003 by it whereby road cutting during June-October was forbidden. None of the agencies has since abided by the rule. Why? Somebody must be held to account for this. Of course, there has been a chronic lack of coordination among DCC, Dhaka Wasa, Rajuk and telecommunications organisations which is why the demand for a unified single authority to streamline the utility services' repair and expansion works was raised by the experts a long time ago. This dispensation must go hand in hand with a scientific projection made of the city's rising demand for utility services -- the expansion of the networks and their repair and maintenance -- so that the perennial road cutting problem can be resolved. Let's study the other cities' modus operandi and adopt the best practices in the field.
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