Cracks, potholes make journey difficult

The 45-kilometre road from Chapainawabganj town via Nachole to Porsha in Naogaon District is in a terrible state due to a lack of proper maintenance over a long period, causing thousands of people to suffer.

The road serves a large number of vehicles including buses and trucks, being of particular importance in transporting paddy from various Naogaon upazilas and some parts of Dinajpur to Chapainawabganj rice mills for processing.

During the monsoon months the already deteriorated condition of the road has worsened further due to the heavy rains, according to locals. Nowadays bus passengers often find their vehicles stranded in large potholes, with the same fate befalling goods-laden trucks and private passenger vehicles.

“Tyres are often punctured and vehicles often fall off the road due to its poor condition,” says Entaj Ali, an inter-district bus driver.

“The road is totally unsafe,” agrees his Bangladesh Road Transport Corporation colleague Mohammad Selim, who says his bus plies the route only through having no other option.

The cracks and holes that characterise the long-neglected road surface bring risk to all vehicular movement. Patients on their way to hospitals including the Rajshahi Medical College and Hospital particularly suffer.

School teacher Abbas Ali of Dampura village in Naogaon's Niamotpur upazila commutes daily along this road by motorcycle to his school in Porsha upazila. “The lack of maintenance, large volume of the traffic and the rainfall have combined to turn the road from bad to worse,” he says. “Numerous potholes are the size of small meteor craters; conditions are so bad that even bicycle riders have trouble.”

Yet the Roads and Highways Department (RHD) has paid scant attention to the road.

Even the section from Amnura to Nachole in Chapainawabganj that was repaired by RHD six months ago has already developed cracks due to the poor standard of the road repair, locals say.

The RHD executive engineer in Chapainawabganj, Sunity Kumar Chakma, told The Daily Star a proposal for reconstruction of the Lakhhipur to Nachole section of the road is due to be placed before a meeting of the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council very soon, though he could not specify a date. He said he was hopeful construction would start soon after project approval and budget allocation processes have been completed.

Chakma's counterpart in Naogaon, Abdul Alim Khan, said road reconstruction should begin before the end of the year.

In the meantime the situation is set to worsen to the detriment of all road users and local communities.