An Untold Story of Transportation

In Dhaka city, the condition of the local roads is very poor. People living inside the city have to face a lot of trouble to reach their daily destinations. People living inside the city have to take minibus, CNG or rickshaw to reach secondary road or arterial road from their home.

Today I am going to talk about a region of Dhaka city that is inside the border of Dhaka-Narayanganj. This place is known as Mohammadbag. Every day people of Muhammad bug wake up with a fear that they have to go to Rayerbag. Rayerbag is the place where the secondary road is connected. There is no standard school, madrasha inside Muhammad bug, let alone college or university. These people including the kids must have to come Rayerbag to go anywhere in Dhaka.The distance of Rayerbag from Mohammadbag approximately 2 to3 km, which is not much if someone take CNG or Auto rickshaw. But the condition of the road is so poor that life of each person is at stake here. This was an earthen road once. Later it was designed as rigid pavement. This road had to construct 3 times within 10 years. Road was constructed taking 2 years of time and after six months servicing properly, it failed. That means within 10 years of time, total construction period was 6 years. Day after day it damaged that badly that people had to take another long way to go Rayerbag. When the road was constructing, people of Mohammadbag had to go Rayerbag by some other roads which were in far worst condition than the direct road connecting Rayerbag. The people had no choice but to go through those roads expecting that someday the direct road will be fixed and they can travel safely to their destinations.And the rickshaw and CNG fares are raising daily. People need to spend more money to go Mohammadbag to Rayerbag than going outside of Dhaka. This is just the beginning of their misery. Now the condition of this road is that bad that no vehicle can enter into Mohammadbag. Vehicle comes upto ¾ th of the road somehow and the rest of the road people have to walk. People can somehow survive in dry season and in rainy season the condition of the road becomes more pathetic. During rainy season the road remains submerged under drain water. This makes the situation far worst leaving the people no option but to pray to the Almighty so that rain might stop. Roads are cut here and there in the name of construction and most of the times utility lines under the road are being damaged. Hepatitis is common disease here because drinking water becomes contaminated.

People are not only suffering here, they are dying. Let’s say someone named Ayesha who is a pregnant woman and having her labour pain. How will she go for doctors? By wailking? Cause she have to walk ¼ th of the road. Let’s say she can survive and manage to walk somehow this much, but when she will take rickshaw or CNG to go Rayerbag, the unborn baby will definitely die because of the hilarious shaking and vibration due to the uneven and outrageous road condition. Or let’s say someone named Rehana who is an aged woman is coming Mohammadbag to see her daughter’s family and she has less bone density problems. She can break her bones by coming here. The road has unlimited numbers of gutters here and there. Every day accidents are occurring and people are suffering, in worst situation they are dying. These deaths are not counted as murder. But this is silent killing. This is called killing people under the name of development.

Before reading engineering I thought this road fails due to rough weather and continuous raining. But reading engineering in BUET, I learned rigid pavement is such that can withstand in all weathered condition, water friendly, have very long life and require very little maintainance. But why a rigid pavement constructed in a remote area with minimum traffic can’t withstand a year. Why can’t we properly construct a local road in our country? Why bridges made by the british can withstand 100 years and we can’t even make a road that can service properly one year? Why can’t we use our engineering knowledge properly? Why people have to suffer and die for the negligency in constructing? That is why our engineers never come back to our country once they go outside. Because we can’t apply here what we have learned. This is just waste of our money also waste of our merit. When will our engineers be united and when will these sufferings end?