The High Court on Sunday asked the government to immediately form a committee of experts from the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology to find out the cause of the premature damage of the Dhaka-Mymensingh Highway.
The committee will also need to identify the persons responsible for the untimely damage and to find out whether there was any negligence by the engineers and contractors involved in constructing the road.
The bench of Justice AHM Shamsuddin Chowdhury and Justice Gobinda Chandra Tagore asked the concerned authorities to submit the probe report within six weeks.
The court also asked the government to explain in three weeks why it would not be directed to ensure reconstruction or repair of the Tongi to Gazipur stretch of the Dhaka-Mymensingh Highway.
The concerned authorities will also have to explain why they should not be directed to take appropriate legal action against the persons responsible for damage to the highway.
The secretaries to the communications and finance ministries, chief engineer of the Roads and Highways Department, its additional chief engineer and its executive engineer in Gazipur were asked to answer the rule in three weeks.
The order was passed after the hearing of a public interest litigation writ petition filed by the Bangladesh Human Rights and Peace for Bangladesh, which drew the court's attention to various newspaper reports that owners operating their buses on the Dhaka-Mymensingh and Dhaka-Tangail highways had suspended service to press home their demand for repair of the roads without any delay.
The strike will mean lots of inconvenience and suffering for the weekend home-goers and those who have to commute between the capital and the five districts regularly. It will also affect communications between Dhaka and parts of Gazipur district.
Petitioner's counsel Manzill Murshid, citing newspaper reports, told the court that the highway, which was last repaired in 2005, had become totally unfit to be plied by any kind of vehicle.
The highways were supposed to be renovated under the Road Sector Reform Programme, a World Bank-funded project initiated in 2005. But the initiative was abandoned in 2009 without any work being done on the highways as the WB refused to provide funds on the grounds of certain anomalies in the project, Manzill added, quoting newspaper reports.
He also said that the usually three-hour journey on the 120km Dhaka-Mymensingh Highway now needs eight to ten hours due to its abysmal condition, which has caused many accidents in addition to the inordinate delay.
Source : New Age
