Withdraw decision to hand over road work to LGED

The Roads and Highways Engineers and Employees Action Committee stages a demonstration in the city yesterday to press for its three-point demand. Photo: STAR

The decision will leave at least 10,000 employees of the R & H department jobless, the union leaders said at a press conference held under the banner of 'R & H Engineers and Employees Action Committee.

The Planning Commission recently decided to hand over 1,093 roads of the (R & H) department, out of 1427, to the LGED.

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The leaders said the LGED has not enough manpower and experiences to do such a massive work.

They also alleged that the quality of work by the LGED is poor.

The leaders also demanded regularisation of the work-charged employees and urged the authorities to abolish the Institutional Development Component (IDC) which launched package tender for the R & H department work.

The package tender deprived the government of huge revenue as only a small number of bidders get the chance to take part in the bidding, they said, adding that the bidders together set high price for the work, leading to rise in the construction cost.

The leaders called on the government to meet their demand by September 30, and announced a series of programmes to press for it.

As part of the programmes, demonstrations will be staged at all district offices of the R & H Department from 11:00am to 1:00pm daily till September 30.

Other programmes are forming human chains in Dhaka and other district offices on September 18, submission of memorandum to the prime minister on September 21 and a token hunger strike on September 28.

Union leaders Abed Uddin Ahmed and Abdun Noman addressed the press conference.