Editorial
Roads in disrepair and citizens in misery
Who ensures the interests of the community?
IT is the same old story all over again. It is the monsoon season and just when citizens are in need of life being kept normal, they see that the roads they must use are in pitiable conditions once more. Six months have gone by since roads in the city's Hazaribagh and Rayerbazar area were dug up by the Dhaka Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA) to install storm sewers. In any civilised society, this kind of work would have begun and ended in a few weeks. But in the particularly sordid conditions in which we live, it really matters little to the authorities whether or not the amenities we are entitled to as citizens are there. Now an engineer of the Dhaka City Corporation tries to explain away the problem by suggesting that after installing the storm sewers, Wasa covered the dug-up roads with earth rather than sand. Our question is simple: where was the DCC when Wasa was committing this manifest wrong?
The DCC itself is not exactly the kind of do-gooder it pretends to be. Where there is the stipulation, formulated by the DCC itself in 2003, that such work as the one Wasa has been doing in Hazaribagh and Rayerbazar must be finished in 28 days, what profound reason is there for the work to go on for months together? And does it ever occur to our city planners (and what do they plan anyway?) that their inefficiency is causing citizens no end of misery? Organisations like Wasa and DCC only emerge from slumber, or call it their ostrich-like position, when the media point out the irresponsible manner of their working or not working at all. Only a couple of days ago, a local television channel focused on the shame of a road which has actually been a large drain, with all its attendant germs, dirt, et cetera, in Meradia under Khilgaon for the past many years. A mere two-kilometre stretch of road going unrepaired for years? There are other such roads, all falling to pieces or simply caving in, in areas like Dhanmondi, Mohammadpur and Shyamoli. Even in Gulshan and Banani the cracks on some roads are getting ever wider.
Such a situation simply cannot go on. Where are the various ward commissioners to look to the interests of the community, the job they were elected to do? And why must Wasa, DCC and other bodies always undertake road repair and other works only when the rains arrive? One does not need much intelligence to understand that repair works during the monsoon only worsen what is already a tortuous struggle for normal life. And yet it is something the organisations responsible for the provision of utilities do not comprehend. The absence of planning and coordination is appalling.
Will the authorities wake up to these nightmarish realities and convince citizens that they are indeed competent enough to give them a minimum of welfare?
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