People may face heavy traffic congestion in the Comilla part of the Dhaka-Chittagong Highway due to the load of home-going people for the upcoming Eid festival and also due to two lanes of the highway being under construction.
If the construction is not finished before most people start their journey home, then the homegoing people will be fated to suffer a lot in the traffic jam.
On the four-lane highway, vehicles are using only two lanes due to the reconstruction of two lanes in Comilla's Daudkandi and two in Dhaka facing lanes of approximately two kilometers from Baropara to Hasanpur.
Traffic congestion on this highway remains highest in the 45-kilometer area between Chandina Madhaiya and Sahidnagar.
A bus driver told Dhaka Tribune that the traffic jam started when vehicles came from the wrong side.
"The low-speeding three wheelers and accidents also cause traffic jams," he said.
A Comilla businessman who travels twice from Dhaka to Comilla and vice-versa said since one side remained closed during the road construction, vehicles could move only in one way at a time. "This causes huge traffic congestion," he said.
Daudkandi Highway police station Officer-in-Charge (OC) Jahirul Islam said the police faced difficulties in controlling the traffic as they could not monitor the vehicles properly due to a lack of adequate manpower.
Therefore, any problem like using the wrong lane, accidents, and rescue work after accidents takes a much longer time to be solved, he added.
"We could have tackled the traffic jams if we had more manpower for monitoring and rescue work after accidents," said OC Jahirul.
He also said that the pressure was less in the last two years due to the Covid-19 pandemic but the pressure had increased this year.
OC Jahirul said the superintendent of police had been informed regarding the lack of manpower.
As a result, he said, there would be three patrol teams who would monitor traffic twenty-four hours a day.
He said that two control rooms had been added for tackling the traffic jams during the Eid festival.
He added that to reduce traffic jams following toll collections, the police had discussed the issue with the authorities concerned twice and asked them to use all the eight booths for toll collections and to always keep the server active.
Discussions took place with the Roads and Highways department, which was told to finish the construction work before 25 Ramadan and to leave space in the lanes so that some vehicles could move.
Comilla Roads and Highway District Executive Engineer Suniti Chakma said construction work would be stopped if people were seen suffering because of it.
He added that construction work was going on because it would not be possible to do it in the upcoming rainy season.
