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Dhaka Torn-up

Road diggers trade blame

TAWFIQUE ALI and HELEMUL ALAM
The usual game is on. The utility agencies responsible for digging up the roads in the capital during the rainy season are blaming each other for the mess.
Government agencies dealing with water, electricity, gas and telephone services this year too are digging up city roads all at a time without any coordination among themselves and “coinciding” with the monsoon.
Even some dug-up roads that had been claimed to be done with by agencies have been filled up without much care and defying rules.
According to the rules, any agency or individual that requires digging up a road must fill the trench with sand after the work is done. Then it becomes the city corporation's responsibility to restore the road to its normal state. But in many cases, utility agencies have filled dug-up roads with mud.
The city's Jatrabari, Sayedabad, Tikatuli, Kamalapur, Mirpur, Demra, Uttara, Gulshan and Dhanmondi areas have many roads either strewn with potholes or being dug up and left without repair.
As a result, stagnant water from seasonal downpours is FROM PAGE 1
making the potholes invisible, leaving commuting in the capital more perilous than ever.
A couple of weeks ago, Manzoor Hossain, a sports organiser, while going to Wari from Gulshan got stuck on a worn out muddy road near Ovishar Cinema in the capital's Haatkhola area.
He also spoke of a cargoladen truck that had fallen into a loosely filled trench dug by a utility service agency near Rajdhani Super Market in Tikatuli. The truck remained there, dangerously tilted and disrupting traffic movement.
"It took me more than an hour by rickshaw to cover the distance of a ten-minute walk. The entire stretch of the road is badly damaged and covered with ankle-deep mud,” said Manzoor.
Md Alim Uddin, an employee of Sonar Bangla Transport in Bakshibazar, said at least three cargo trucks got trapped in the trench dug by Dhaka Water and Sewerage Authority (Wasa) in the area, as the filling could not take the load.
Raju Ahmed, manager of a restaurant close to Alim's office, said Wasa had filled up the trench with mud. This has been hampering businesses in the locality for the last several days.
Fatima Ahmed, a resident of road No 126 in Gulshan, said Wasa had dug up the road in March but the city corporation was yet to repair it. Apart from mess created by the digging, the road was full of craters.
Mirpur resident Nasir Uddin said incompetent handling of road digging has been making people suffer miserably over the years. “If the work is done during the dry season we suffer from unbearable dust and from mud if it is done during the monsoon.
Vendor Md Hasan in Tejgaon said the digging of roads had not only been making pedestrian movement risky but also frustrating their business for the last three months.
Brig Gen Md Ahsanul Huq, chief engineer of Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC), said the organisation had initially decided to permit road digging until April 14 but the deadline was later extended to June 30 for some of the utility agencies.
“However, despite repeated official reminders, some agencies are digging up roads even after the deadline,” he said.
On repairing the Tejgaon-Gulshan link road, he said the authorities concerned could not restore the road as Wasa had not completed its work at several junctions.
The repairing of roads was
taking time because the agencies concerned defying rules filled up the trenches with mud instead of sand, he said, adding that an agency had filled up the trenches on roads in Kafrul and Mirpur areas with mud.
“Asphalt cannot be used on mud-filled surfaces as it will lead to subsidence,” he said.
Saidur Rahman, executive engineer of DNCC, said Dhaka Wasa had filled the dug-up portions of Kalyanpur-Mazar road via Technical and the road from Mirpur-1 intersection to Kalyanpur with soil.
Taqsem A Khan, managing director of Dhaka Wasa, ruled out the allegations saying, "It is a lame excuse that the trenches were not filled up according to rules. They [the city corporation] could have informed us or asked for extra money if the filling-up was not done properly.”
Repair works are also pending on Rokeya Sarani, at Shyamoli, Sobhanbagh, Technical roundabout and near Bangla College.
Wasa dug up Darrusalam Road, stretching from Mirpur-1 to Technical roundabout, about six months ago to lay storm sewer lines and completed the work, including filling-up of the trench, within three months. The road still lies unattended.
About the delay in repairing the roads from Technical to Kalyanpur and Mirpur-1, Saidur Rahman said Wasa had dug up more roads than it was permitted to.
Wasa dug the Technical roundabout-Russell Square, Tibet- National Shooting Club, and Rampura-Malibagh roads to lay water pipelines.
Tasqem said they had completed the works on the roads much ahead of schedule, but the city corporation instead of repairing those left the roads in a sorry condition.
Wasa had also dug many roads in Uttara, including road 9 in sector-4, last year but the city corporation took a year to repair them.
The Power Grid Company of Bangladesh Ltd (PGCB) has been installing underground electric cable lines from Bhashantek to Agargaon through Mirpur, Agargaon to Satmasjid Road and from Kalyanpur to Agargaon since 2010. The work is supposed to be completed by mid-2013. They, however, stopped the work because of the monsoon.
PGCB Managing Director Md Jamal Ullah said the authorities had filled the dug up portion of the roads with sand. They had conducted a joint survey with the city corporation on the dug-up sites in June and found it had been done through complying with the rules, he added.