Can vulnerable railway bridges brook delay in repairing?

It is unthinkable that decrepit and damaged railway bridges would remain in a state of disrepair not for one, two or ten days but for years together. Yet that is what the general state of railway bridges is, particularly in the Eastern Zone where as many as 18 vulnerable bridges remain unrepaired for a long time. It would not be farfetched to suggest that tracks all over the country are generally in a similar state. And, as one understands, a good stretch of the tracks may not have been surveyed at all.

Given that the railway tracks are built on embanked ground and that these run through numerous canals, rivers and rivulets, they are already very susceptible to denudation and subsidence of land. Standing water in low-lying areas adds even more to the vulnerability, compounding the maintenance problem for the authorities. But that is no excuse for railway tracks and damaged slippers remaining unrepaired for years.

Regrettably, one of the most-used modes of long-distance journey and perhaps the safest of all is no longer so. Indiscipline, corruption and a lackadaisical attitude that generally pervades all the public-service providers, have brought the railway to the poor state that it is in today. According to a report in a leading Bangla daily, there have been 868 accidents in the last five years, mostly because of faulty tracks. The accidents have caused the death of 111 people. The focus on big projects has deflected the attention from regular preventive maintenance and oversight. This, despite the fact that the present government has spent more than Tk 6000 crore in the last decade on the railway.

We have been calling on the government for a long-term development plan for the railway and not allocation in driblets that are often frittered away on wasteful heads. It is also time to root out the fundamental malaise that afflicts the sector. Without that, the best of plans will go to waste.