Highways in disrepair

Prime Minister (PM) Sheikh Hasina's directive to the communications ministry to immediately repair the dilapidated roads is welcome. It is expected that now the minister concerned would not be constrained by any fund crisis, especially after the PM's assurance to this effect.
Hopefully, repairing of the Dhaka-Mymensingh road, the poor condition of which drove the transport services operating on that arterial highway to go on a strike in protest, will be completed within a week.
The fresh spurt of interest and activities to improve the badly damaged roads across the country is appreciable. Questions remain, though. Why has the realisation come so belatedly, when the incumbent government is halfway through its current term in office? What was the ministry, or more particularly, the Roads and Highways (R&H) department, doing so far? Why every time problems have to come to a head, before those are able to propel the responsible minister or the department concerned into action? What held them from taking due stock of the overall situation long before the roads had gone into such a bad shape?
All this is indicative of a government that is generous about allocations of fund for building a new infrastructure, but rather niggardly when it comes to its repair and maintainance.
Unfortunately, repair and maintenance have traditionally been a low-priority area in our policymakers' mind, so far as budgetary allocations are concerned. Other factors that come in the way of regular maintenance of the communication infrastructures include competing interests at political and other levels to have a slice of the pie.
Small wonder, things have come to such a desperate.
The emphasis the government is laying at the moment on the issue should not be a one-off one, but a routine exercise in the government's budgetary provisioning. The R & H department, in particular, has to be made responsible for regular maintenance of roads with the provision of punishment in case of any default. The errant officials need to be held to account.