A majority of the country’s district highways have worsened during the 2014-15 fiscal, according to an annual government report.
Officials say lack of monitoring, corruption and slow implementation of development work are some of the main reasons for such conditions.
The report, recently placed at the cabinet, also stated that more than thousand kilometres of national and regional highways were also in poor condition. The annual report was submitted with activities of all ministries during the 2014-15 fiscal.
According to a Highway Development and Management survey of Road Transport and Highways Divisions (RTHD) figures, only 42.25% of district highways, 76.1% of national highways and 65.44% of regional highways has been reported to be in fair to good condition.
According to the report, the country has a total of 21,302 kilometres of highways. The national highway is 3,812km of which 917km is in bad condition. Of the 4,246km regional highways, 1,486km is in dilapidated condition and among the 13,242km of district highway only 5,561km is in good condition, rest of it is mostly broken.
A RHTD official said lack of monitoring of development works, corruption by local officers and slow implementation of projects are some of the major causes behind such a situation. Moreover, pressure put on officers by the local politicians to award construction works to favoured individuals also hamper development work, he added.
However, RTHD Secretary MAN Siddique told the Dhaka Tribune: “Most of the district highways which were constructed by Local Government Engineering Department have been handover to us a few years ago and so we have already taken some projects to improve them.
“In the first phase, we have selected 10 district highways which has been reported to be in very bad condition and it will cost us an estimated total of Tk1,000 crore,” he added.
The RTHD secretary said: “The government also have plans to improve the national and regional highways. According to the plan, 85% of the roads will soon be in good condition and regional highways will see a rise of 75% by the current fiscal year.”
“After the implementation, the number of good condition district highways will see a rise of 50%,” he added.