Rangamati-Bandarban road badly damaged, needs repair
Bandarban road has been badly damaged during the monsoon, much to the suffering of the inter-district passengers and locals.Photo: STAR
People's sufferings have mounted as the 52-kilometer Rangamati-Bandarban road became unfit for traffic movement allegedly due to lack of proper renovation work for years. The hill road was handed over to Engineering Construction Battalion (ECB-17) of Bangladesh Army in 2000-2001, said sources at local offices of Roads & Highways Department in Rangamati and Bandarban. ECB spent about Tk 32crore till June this year but the inter-district hill road saw little change in 10 years, they said. Contacted, Major Mahmud, project director of ECB-17 at Bangalhalia army camp in Rangamati declined to comment about the condition of the road. Ashrafuzzaman, warrant officer of ECB, said, “The road was repaired last year. But it got damaged soon due to plying of heavyweight trucks”. The road was constructed only for vehicles weighing 10 to 12 tonnes. But now at least 200 sand-laden trucks weighing over 30 tonnes each ply the road every day, damaging the road badly, he explained. During a recent visit this correspondent found the road from Rikhali Bazar to Bandarban town full of large potholes. Komolmoy Tangchangya, a passenger, said “We have been suffering much due to bad condition of the road. I often use this road but it never ran down so much like this year." It now takes around five hours to reach Rangamati from Bandarban whereas it took only two and a half hours in the past, he said. The road may become totally unfit for vehicles within a year or so, if it is not repaired urgently, Komolmoy observed. Though the authorities renovated the road several times in the past, the condition of the road deteriorate within a short period, he said.
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