Road mishap frequent in Lalmonirhat

Vehicles sometimes fall into the roadside ditch while using a risky diversion road in Mahendranagar area beside the Mahendranagar-Mostofi road as construction of a culvert on the road is progressing very slowly.

The Barabari-Mahendranagar and Barabari-Kulaghat roads that connect with the district headquarters in Sadar upazila are also unfit for traffic movement, forcing vehicles to use the risky diversion, transport workers said, adding that they would not use the diversion if there was another alternative option for connecting with the district town.

Truck driver Nur Islam, 45, said repair work of the Mahendranagar-Mostofi road was completed two weeks ago, but construction of the culvert is yet to be completed.

“Twelve loaded trucks fell from the diversion road into the roadside ditch in the last two weeks,” said General Secretary of District Truck and Tank Lorry Sramik Union in Lalmonirhat Abul Kalam. “We requested the Local Government Engineering Department (LGED) authorities several times to build the culvert as soon as possible, but to no effect,” he added.

Bus driver Zia Islam, 42, said, “There are two other connecting roads to the district town but those are totally unfit for traffic movement.”

Executive Engineer of LGED in Lalmonirhat Al-Amin Khan said the contractor started constructing an 8-by-18-metre culvert, repairing a 5.53-km road, and a 90-metre road protection work costing Tk 4.35 crore on January 19 in 2016, and the work was to be completed in June 2016.

As the contractor failed to complete the work in the scheduled period, he got two more deadlines -- October 2016 and December 2016 -- which were also missed, Al-Amin added.

Contractor Bablu Miah said the road repairing work has already been completed and the culvert construction and road protection work are going on, which will be completed by the current month. “We could not construct the culvert in the scheduled time due to water on the spot,” he said.

Al-Amin said work on the culvert will be completed by end of February, adding that the contractor missed the deadlines showing various reasons, especially rain and water stagnation.