Road Repair Fund Collection: Move stalled for years

The Ministry of Road Transport and Bridges took steps to collect toll from major highways for road maintenance, but an initiative to raise dedicated fund for the same purpose remained stalled for years.

In July 2013, parliament passed Road Maintenance Fund Board Act to form a board to raise and manage a fund for repairing and maintaining roads.

Although the law came into effect in December 2014, the 12-member board remained largely non-functional for the last six and a half years and managed to raise no fund at all. During the time, the authorities could neither formulate rules nor fianalise organogram for the board.

Moreover, they could not fix the process of collecting money for the fund from the Ministry of Finance.

As a result, Roads and Highways Department (RHD) has to collect fund for maintaining and repairing roads following the conventional process which is time consuming. Besides, the fund now RHD gets to maintain around 22,000-kilometre network is very insufficient, said officials.

In the latest development, a committee, formed to review the draft rules prepared in 2018 and prepare an organogram for the board, submitted its report last month.

The board was scheduled to hold its next meeting today to settle this issues, said Anwar Hossain Chowdhury, additional secretary of Road Transport and Highways Division and acting chief executive officer of the board, yesterday.

The meeting, however, was postponed amid coronavirus fear.

WHY IS THE FUND NECESSARY?

After placing the Road Maintenance Fund Board Bill-2013 in parliament, Roads Transport and Bridges Minister Obaidul Quader said a huge backlog of dues were made in repairing and maintaining the roads as only 13 to 16 percent of necessary budget was managed then.

So, forming a self-reliant fund is a demand of time for ensuring supply of sufficient money for proper maintenance of roads, he said, adding that development partners were also putting importance on such fund.

The purpose of the fund was to ensure timely and uninterrupted supply of money for maintaining RHD's road network, he added.

Poor road condition is a much discussed issue in Bangladesh and lack of necessary and timely maintenance is often blamed for it.

In the latest survey of the RHD, conducted over 17,452km, out of 22,096km national, regional and district roads, between November 2018 and March 2019, it was found that some 4,247km (24.34 percent) of the roads were in poor, bad or very bad conditions. The rest were in good or fair conditions.

In December last year at an RHD programme, Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal and State Minister for Power and Energy Nasrul Hamid came down heavily on the RHD officials for poor planning and maintenance of roads that wasted public money and caused people to suffer.

Finance Minister even said he would stop allocating money for new road projects unless proper use of the money was ensured.

At the same programme, AK Mohammad Fazlul Karim, now additional chief engineer of RHD, said they receive only 15 to 20 percent of the money required for road maintenance every year.

The RHD got Tk 2,550 crore against the demand of Tk 10,679 crore in 2019-20 fiscal year for maintenance while Tk 2,228.91 crore was given against a demand of Tk 11,884 crore in 2018-19 fiscal year.

It is difficult for the government to give necessary allocation for road maintenance as per RHD's need assessment. So, many countries collect money from road users in the form of toll or fuel levy, Fazlul told this correspondent on March 3.

From this concept, the idea of raising a dedicated fund for road maintenance came, he said.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, during an Ecnec meeting on September 3 last year, instructed the authorities concerned to collect toll from long-haul vehicles on the national highways.

After the meeting, Planning Minister MA Mannan told reporters that the toll money would be deposited in a bank account and spent on the maintenance and repair works of the roads.

The Ministry of Road Transport and Bridges already directed RHD to take necessary steps in this regard and RHD is going to conduct a survey for assessing necessary infrastructure that would be required to start collecting tolls on the four-lane highways.

NON-FUNCTIONAL BOARD, NO FUND RAISED

Around one and a half years after parliament passed the act, the government activated the law from December 2014 and a board was formed afterwards.

The board was supposed to give recommendations imposing any charge for using roads; allocate necessary money for road maintenance; and analysis and evaluate uses of allocated fund. But no such works was done by the board so far.

The board was supposed to hold at least one meeting every three months but it held only nine meetings and the last one was in October last year, sources said.

BUET Prof Hasif Mohammad Ahsan, a member of the board, said he was included in the board around a year ago replacing one of his former colleagues but did not get chance to attend any meeting.

"I have lodged a written complaint [with the ministry] for not informing me about meeting schedule," he told this correspondent on March 2.

As per the act, apart from government donation, source of the fund would be toll, levy, fees and charges collected by different government agencies and it would be determined by rules.

But the board could not formulate the rules yet.

In a draft rule formulated in 2018 the board found it inappropriate and thus a five-member committee led by Abdul Malek, additional secretary (administration wing) of Road Transport and Highway Division was formed last year to review it, Anwar Hossain Chowdhury said.

The committee, which was also tasked to submit a draft organogram of the board, submitted the draft rules and organogram last month, he said.

A member of the committee said all the revenues different government agencies collected deposited to consolidated fund and distributed through budgetary allocation. So, there is no scope to allocate money for the fund directly, he said.

"So, through rules, we will identify sources [agencies] of money for the fund and the board would fix an amount scrutinizing fiscal target of sources and would seek budgetary allocation," he said.

In case of board's failure to utilise full fund for a particular fiscal, it would not go back to state exchequer like other agencies, rather kept in the fund as government donation, he said.

BOARD CHAIRMAN OUT OF REACH

The Daily Star tried to contact Road Transport and Highway Division's Secretary Nazrul Islam, also the chairman of the board, over phone for several times but he did not respond.

When this correspondent went to his office on March 8 to ask why they could not raise the fund in last six and half years, he did not speak directly.

Nazrul Islam, through his personal secretary, said, "We are working on the matter. I have to respond after talking to officials concerned."