A tell-tale road repair project

With the advent of monsoon, muddy and slushy potholes plague several streets of the capital. Now thanks to a report published in our paper yesterday, we know what ails them. The road under the Mayor Hanif flyover is a case in point. Last year, the Dhaka South City Corporation had spent Tk. 79 crore to mend the busy thoroughfare that connects the city with suburban Narayanganj and leads to Dhaka-Chittagong highway. A year on, despite its expensive patch-up work, the road remains in the same dilapidated state that it used to be. The crevices in the street are so huge that only heavy vehicles are able to ply the street and that too with difficulty; it has remained off-limit to private cars. A huge chunk of the money allocated to the refurbishment of the road has been allegedly defalcated as the contractor had only repaired a small patch of the street and did not even care to touch a huge swathe of the thoroughfare. Now, the DSCC has decided to start a Tk. 20 crore project to mend a road it had 'fixed' only months ago. 

To start an official probe, the ACC had collected documents of the road, its drainage development project and taken statements of the officials concerned. What, however, beguiles us is that the ACC, for reasons best known to it, has yet to begin an investigation. We believe that it is incumbent upon the ACC to probe the allegations of such gross misappropriation of public fund. An interdepartmental inquiry to find out where things went wrong and how needs to be launched as well. It is now public knowledge that a nexus is formed between some officials and contractors to embezzle funds. This syndicate needs to be broken and corruption in public service rooted out.