Roads or death trap?

Journey on the city roads, lanes and by lanes has turned a nightmare for motorists and pedestrians mainly due to indiscriminate digging by the service providers and lack of maintenance and repair work by the authorities concerned.
Construction material dumped on the roadside by contractors in several places added to further woes to the road users.
Most of the city’s some 2200 kilometer road stretches have developed numerous potholes with many manholes lying open, making traffic difficult and risky.
Even the roads and lanes in the city’s diplomatic zones are not free of potholes and ditches making the movement of all type of vehicles quite hazardous.
“Potholes in many places of the road with pools of rainwater posing to be death traps as vehicles lose balance every time they negotiate this turn,” a resident of city’s Baridhara diplomatic zone told the New Nation yesterday.
He said, such a bad condition of the roads in the diplomatic zone is also tarnishing image of the country.
“There is no effort to fill the potholes on the roads which the VIPs, including diplomats, take on a daily basis,” he added.
He further said, roads and lanes in the diplomatic zones need to be in good shape round the year not only for the movement of its residents but also for better image of the country.
Besides, roads in Mirpur, Kazipara, Manipuripara, Shaymoli, Mohmmadpur, Lalmatia, Kalaynpur, Rayerbazar, Lalbag, Postogla, Jatrabri, Purba Jurain, Badda, Basabo, Kadamtali, Madartek, Mugda, Sabujbag, Gopibag, Maniknagar, Rampura, Banasree, Khilgaon, Taltala, Razabzar, Tejgaon, Farmgate, Babu Bazar, Phulbaria, Islambag, Gendaria, Mir Hazaribag, Magh Bazar and Phulbari lie in bad conditions.
The residents of these areas, however, accused the two city corporations- Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) and Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC) for not repairing the roads
“We are facing serious problem during movement as most of the roads of our area are in bad shape,” Md Ahsanullah, a resident of city’s Maniknagar area said.
He said, apart from the potholes on road, another problem plaguing the area is road digging. Even walking on roads has become difficult the monsoon rains have aggravated the condition of the dug-up roads.
“The authorities of DSCC are sometimes carrying out hasty patchwork during monsoon to repair the roads. The roads later become unfit following monsoon rain,” he added.
He further said, the corporation should have taken up repair works during summer so that road-users are not put to difficulty during monsoon. Now, the motorists are put to hardship, as they are facing difficulty in negotiating the pothole-filled stretches.
When asked, a senior DNCC official clamed that the Corporation is carrying out road repair work regularly for smooth movement of the city people.
He, however, said the work for permanent repair of the city roads that are unusable for traffic movement would start after ending of the current monsoon.
“We are now only patching the roads on a temporary basis without using bitumen as permanent repair would not be effective because of rainwater during the current monsoon,” he added.