From bridge to boat
Thousands of people have started using boats to commute between Delduar upazila in Tangail and the district headquarters as a bailey bridge on the road collapsed four days ago under the weight of a fertiliser-laden truck.
The repair work of the 66-metre steel bridge has been going on since Tuesday when the accident happened, but an official said it would take four or five more days to restore it.
The bridge collapsed when the truck with 38 tonnes of diammonium phosphate crossed halfway, said Shahadat Hossain Kabir, upazila nirbahi officer (UNO) of Delduar. It was taking the fertiliser to Tangail town from Chittagong, he said, adding that the truck and fertiliser could not be salvaged yet.
In the accident, the driver and helper of the truck got seriously injured.
A resident of Nagorpur upazila next to Delduar, State Minister for Posts and Telecommunications Tarana Halim visited the site on Thursday and directed the authorities to restore the bridge as soon as possible.
Mohammad Abdul Hakim, a sub-divisional engineer of Roads and Highways Department in Tangail, said the work was going on. "It will take four to five more days for readying the bridge for vehicular movement."
RHD built the bridge in 1989.
Talking to The Daily Star, boat user Abdul Hamid said most of the bridges in the upazila were old and shaky, but heavy vehicles from different parts of the country kept on using them to avoid the traffic jam on Dhaka-Tangail highway.
That's why these accidents happen, he said.
Just four days before the latest accident, another bridge in the same upazila collapsed after a bus of Hanif Paribahan with over 50 passengers got on it. As a result, road communication between Tangail Sadar and Manikganj has remained suspended since that day, July 14.
Contacted, lawmaker from Delduar-Nagarpur constituency Khandakar Abdul Baten said heavy vehicles were using the local roads though they did not have the permit; the bridges were collapsing one after another because of that.
He said, "Steps will be taken immediately so that the heavy goods vehicles cannot ply these roads."
Comments