Passengers on Dhaka-Gazipur road face untold sufferings

Staff Reporter :
The untold sufferings of the passengers on Dhaka-Gazipur road started some ten years ago when the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project was undertaken in order to ease the smooth journey for the commuters.
A number of times the project deadline was extended because of various mismanagements including suspension of work by the contractors halfway without any accountability, and slow progress to complete the work before time.
Even lack of proper safety measures caused various minor and major fatal accidents during the ongoing project work at different times.
The recent girder accident on August 15 killed five people in a car when a girder fell on the running vehicle in Uttara. The girders were being handled without maintaining proper safety measures.
After the incident, the travellers always feel the tension of falling objects from the under construction project.
The sufferings of the commuters have not ended here; rather their pains have been continuing while they travel along the road of the project area due to the rundown streets.
The road from Gazipur intersection to Uttara House Building especially from Ershadnagar to Abdullahpur is in the worst condition for plying vehicles smoothly.
The big ditches are found on the road here and there as the bitumen has washed away or removed due to the haphazard digging in the project area.
The vehicles cannot play smoothly rather the passengers suffer the worst due to heavy traffic congestion both day and night.
The intense air pollution due to heavy dust caused by the project work is another diabolical element for health hazards.
Passengers especially the old people, children, patients said that they want a respite from the sufferings during their travel.
“Our life has become hellish when the project has started. Every day I travel the road from Gazipur to Dhaka by bus. It takes hours to reach my destination,” Muhammad Zafar, a businessman, told the New Nation on Monday.
“It cannot be called development if a four year project takes more than 10 years time. We want to get rid of the unending sufferings,” he added.
Many of the passengers alleged that they cannot reach their destination in time due to heavy traffic jams on the Gazipur-Abdullahpur road.
“I start my journey early in the morning to reach my office in Banani from Gazipur. But most of the time I am late due to traffic congestion,” Azizur Rahman, an employee in a private company, said.
 “The air pollution is unbearable. It is responsible for respiratory diseases. But the authority has not taken any measures to prevent it during the construction work,” he added.
“We also feel tension of falling objects from the BRT project while travelling as the safety measures are not satisfactory to me. The authority should have taken many safety measures for the protection of the travellers,” Rahman said.
“The condition of some parts of the road is still in bad condition. It is true that people suffer for it. But we hope it will be over by December,” BRT Company Managing Director Shafiqul Islam said.
Sources said that the BRT project was taken up in November 2012 for completion by December 2016 at a cost of Tk 2,037.9 crore.
But the project got delayed on account of various problems including design, water-logging, and it was revised four times, with its total cost standing at Tk 4,268.3 crore.
Then the deadline was fixed for June 2022, but it has not been finished yet. However, it is expected that it will be opened for traffic by June 2023.
According to the Ministry of Road Transport and Bridges last month, only 65.80 percent of the construction work of the 20.5 kilometres road had been completed, while 70 percent of the 10-lane Tongi Bridge work had completed so far.
Commuters urged the concerned authority to complete all the project works as soon as possible to relieve them from the intolerable sufferings of the traffic jam as it consumes their life, time and energy every day.