Editorial
Abysmal condition of bailey bridges
Reconstructing them should be prioritised
A photograph carried in the front page of yesterday's issue of The Daily Star shows that a bailey bridge at Pekua Upazila in Cox's Bazar broke down with a stone-laden truck precariously hanging down by the side. Quite an unnerving scene indeed! It worries us to think what would have happened if there were a passenger carrier instead of a truck!
From what we could gather from our archive, hundreds of bailey bridges in the country are in dire straits, posing serious risks of fatal accidents and impediments to communication. A good many of them in different districts have become unfit for use for quite a long time. Still, only a few of them have been repaired whereas all others are left to crumble down slowly mainly due to the indifference of the concerned government bodies. In many cases, experts have said, construction of the bridges has been so faulty that some of them need to be reconstructed immediately while some others can function only for a few years.
While large-scale concrete bridges are part of an arterial communication network in a modern world, small-scale bailey bridges play a pivotal role in communication in the interiors of the country. Thanks to the very topography of our country crisscrossed with numerous rivers, canals and tributaries, bailey bridges have become indispensable for both carrying goods and passengers from one district to another. In fact, they are now a part and parcel of our communication network which in turn directly impacts the country's economy.
Therefore, the communication ministry should take the state of the bailey bridges into serious consideration and propel the roads and bridges divisions into repairing and reconstructing them immediately. If we are to avert a string of fatal accidents and bolster marketing networks and internal trade and commerce, there is no alternative to giving priority attention to the bailey bridges.
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