OUR CORRESPONDENT, Mymensingh

Hundreds of people from several villages have been using a risky wooden bridge in Mymensingh’s Bhaluka upazila for years.

The bridge was built around 15 years ago over the Neorarjura canal on local initiative. Residents repair it every season, but it has now become highly risky, they said.

The canal on the Angargara-Katlamari road flows through villages, including Katlamari, Panchgaon, Angargara, Dhalua, Dumnighat, Mallickbari, Awliarchar and Dhakatia.

“The wooden bridge shakes and sways. When an auto-rickshaw gets on the bridge, we get scared. We fear that it might collapse at any moment,” said Shahadat Hossain, an auto-rickshaw driver from Dhalua village.

Hossain Vendor of Baliagara village said hundreds of people, including school and college students, face the risk every day.

The situation becomes more dangerous during the monsoon, when water flow in the canal rises with strong currents, he said.

Locals alleged that political leaders had pledged during different elections to ease their suffering by building a concrete bridge. But there has been no development in this regard.

The remote road is the only route for transporting poultry feed to farms, marketing eggs and chickens produced there, and for the daily movement of workers employed in different factories, he said.

Contacted, Abu Bakar Siddique, upazila engineer of the Local Government Engineering Department in Bhaluka, said they had already visited the site and started preliminary work to construct a concrete bridge there on an urgent basis.