Mindless digging of road, lanes and by-lanes by different agencies at Mouchak, Mogbazar and surrounding areas has been causing immense sufferings to the local people.
Lack of coordination among the utility service providers and the Dhaka city corporations has led to this erratic road digging amid rainy season.Moreover, the construction of Mogbazar-Mouchak flyover on the same road has added to the city dwellers’ sufferings.
People living at Rampura, Malibagh, Kihgaon, Mogbazar and Eskaton are facing extreme difficulties as many lanes and by-lanes in the area have remained dug for the last few months.
Dhaka Water Supply and Sewerage Authority started digging the main road from the Mouchak rail crossing to Mogbazar including several lanes and by-lanes of the surrounding area early this year.
The work, joined in by other agencies including the Titas Gas Transmission and Distribution Company and the Dhaka Electric Supply Company Limited, is still going on.
On the same road, Toma Construction, the construction firm of Mogbazar-Mouchak flyover, has dug big holes surrounded by walls of iron sheets, creating huge traffic conjunction in the area.
‘Every day I get stuck in the traffic tailback on the road (Shahid Shangbadik Selina Parveen Sarak) for hours on way to office at Dhanmondi. It takes around one hour during office time to cross this particular road,’ said Mazeda Begum, who lives at Khilgaon.
‘The road in front of my house at Malibagh was dug by WASA last February,’ said Derwar Hossain, a residence of Malibagh (Chan Bekari Lane). ‘The authority of Titas Gas Transmission stared digging the road again in the mid-April,’ he said.
The local people have also complained that as there is no lamp post in most of the lanes and by-lanes, it becomes risky to pass through the area at night because of the big holes.
They also said because of rain in the recent days the road is full of mud and almost unusable.
‘Holes are being dug on both sides of the road while the footpaths are occupied with goods of shops. The middle of the road is dug for flyover. It is no more a road,’ said Raehan, a student of Stamford University.
Dhaka City Corporation established a One Stop Cell in 2003 to coordinate works of different utility service providers.
‘But actually no coordination is maintained among these agencies,’ blamed Kazi M Borhan Uddin, executive engineer of zone 2 of Dhaka South City Corporation.
The corporation officials said they identified September 1 to April 30 as the dry season. According to their plan, all types of work of utility services, including road digging and road repairs, should be done during this period.
The officials have claimed that they had send letter to all utility providers in the beginning of this fiscal year to sent their proposal to the DSCC for repairing there connections they needed.
‘But we start receiving the proposals from them almost at the end of last year,’ Kazi M Borhan Uddin.
They had received many proposals even in April and May, the officials said.
‘The utility service providers always have their excuses — their project was approved in the middle of the fiscal year and so it took few more months to disburse the allocation,’ he said.
Officials said the One Stop Cell, since its establishment in 2003, has failed to improve the situation owing to violations of its guidelines by the utility service providers.
The One Stop Cell usually calls meeting with representatives of all utility services if any repairs were needed on the VIP roads, otherwise zone office gave the approval,’ said Nurul Amin, superintendent engineer of the DSCC environment circle.
Kazi M Borhan Uddin said, ‘Many times, once digging is completed, we rapier the road and within a week, another utility agency seeks approval for digging the same road.’
-With New Age input
