Residents are experiencing great suffering in Chittagong city due to numerous potholes and cracks having appeared on most of the roads.
As the roads are in a sorry state, residents have been using alternative routes that not only waste their valuable time, but also their money.
Chittagong City Corporation officials, however, claim that they had repair work carried out on several of the roads, but the frequent rain had ruined all of their efforts.
According to the CCC, about 163 kilometres of roadway out of 800km across the city are still in a dilapidated state.
During a recent visit, this Dhaka Tribune correspondent found a number of roads, including the city’s Chawakbazar - Kapashgola, Chawakbazar – Rahattarpul, Sholoshahar-Gate No 2 road, Bahaddarhat to Garibullah Shah, Bakshirhat to Kalamia Bazar, Port Connecting road, DT road, Agrabad Access road, Bahaddarhat Bus Terminal road, Agrabad CDA residential area road, and Nayabazar-Eidgaon road, are riddled with numerous potholes and cracks.
A layer of bitumen has disappeared from a number of roads, turning them muddy. Public transport and goods-laden trucks sometimes break down, triggering huge gridlock on city roads.
Additional Commissioner (inance, administration and traffic) of Chittagong Metropolitan Police AKM Shahidur Rahaman said: “Traffic police are finding it difficult to maintain vehicular movement due to the rundown roads.”
“On several occasions, we requested the CCC to repair the roads on an emergency basis, but no visible output has come out,” he said.
The six kilometer-long Port Connecting Road, which is considered to be one of the busiest roads in Chittagong city, lies in poor condition.
Locals said, only 25 days back, the CCC had done repair work on the road, but all of that repair work was destroyed after the recent rain as the city corporation had used sub-standard materials for it.
Venting his anger, Md Nazim Uddin, a private job holder, said the Port Connecting Road, in some parts, has virtually turned into farmland, as it is difficult to find any concrete structure there.
“The five-minute drive now takes nearly half an hour, as trucks often become immobile due to the road’s awful condition,” he said.
Ruhul Amin, a bus conductor whose bus plies between the Patenga and Bahaddarhat routes, said the ongoing construction work on the Muradpur-Lalkhan Bazar flyover has narrowed the road from Bahhadarhat to the CWASA area, forcing traffic to move slowly.
Superintendent Engineer (division 3) Rafiqul Islam told the Dhaka Tribune that Jica had agreed to reconstruct the Port Connecting Road and the 2.5 kilometre-long Agrabad Access Road, with their own funds.
“If they want to construct the roads, then why does CCC waste the country’s money,” said Rafiq over the phone.
Brushing aside the allegation of using substandard bitumen, another superintendent engineer, Md Yakyub Nabi, said all of the bitumen was collected from Eastern Refinery. Part of the construction disappeared because of the heavy showers, he added.
He added that to install asphalt plant and renovate the dilapidated roads, a proposal of Tk200 crore was approved by the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council. The construction work would start in December, he told the Dhaka Tribune.
Executive Engineer of the CCC Monirul Huda said they had already started repair work on an emergency basis.
