The long wait for safety

About a couple of years back, a JSC examinee died while crossing the bridge that sustained substantial damage during floods in 2018. It started to tilt about five years ago. And ever since, number of people injured, while using the bridge, continue to rise.

However, despite such incidents, the authorities remain indifferent to safety of citizens, who continue to use the bridge -- in Boktarpur area of Singra upazila -- as they do not have any other alternative.

The bridge, over Panaullah canal in Lalor union of Singra, is a vital means of communications for inhabitants of at least 12 villages in Singra, Naldanga and Sadar upazilas of Natore and Atrai upazila of Naogaon.

A man pulls a rickshaw-van on the bamboo platform that the locals made to be able to use the bridge. Photo: Bulbul Ahmed

Instead of providing a safer solution, the local administration did their part by making a makeshift bamboo bridge beside the damaged concrete bridge.

After the makeshift bridge also collapsed about a year ago, locals made a bamboo platform to be able to use the damaged concrete bridge.

Now thousands, including students of six educational institutions, use the severely damaged bridge every day, risking their lives, said locals. 

Nearly two months ago, 12 pedestrians and passengers of a rickshaw-van were injured after the vehicle overturned on the bridge, they added.

During a recent visit to the area, between 9:00am and 12 noon, this correspondent counted at least three hundred light vehicles -- rickshaw-vans, auto-rickshaws and motorbikes -- that crossed the damaged bridge using the bamboo platform.

Nazrul Islam, chairman of Lalor Union Parishad, said students of a high school, four primary schools and a madrasa, on both sides of the canal, take extreme risks every day to cross the broken bridge.

Hundreds of residents from 12 villages in three upazilas of Natore and one in Naogaon use the bridge every day to reach Natore, Naogaon and Bogura. Moreover, farmers in Chalan Beel area face immense sufferings as they use this bridge to transport their agricultural goods, he also said.

Md Aktar uz Zaman, a lecturer at Patul Hapania Degree College, said thousands of people have been suffering for years due to the risky bridge, but the local administration did not take any step in this regard.

“Crossing the bridge with our children is an everyday struggle,” said expecting mother Salma Begum.

Teligram village resident Nurjahan Begum said, “We have no other option but to risk our lives on the bridge.”

Engineer Hasan Ali of Local Government Engineering Department in Singra said they already prepared a Tk 2.5-crore project proposal for a new bridge, but it might taka a year to get the project approved.

Considering the urgency, local public representatives have asked disaster management and relief ministry to build a bridge there immediately, he added.