Slew of rural road proposals as election nears

The Planning Commission is swamped with proposals for new rural roads pouring in as the Local Government Engineering Department is under pressure to prepare a list of such demands and repair old roads before the national elections.

The LGED has sought approval for 60,177 rural roads with a cumulative length of 73,374 kilometres this year, which is eight times higher compared to last year.

Given the average estimated cost of Tk80 lakh to Tk1 crore per km, the overall cost involvement would be nowhere within the range of this year's budgetary allocation for rural roads. Yet the government agency has prepared the list aligning with the "My Village My Town" initiative that promises urban amenities in remote villages, officials argued.

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However, officials of the Planning Commission have expressed their concerns, saying approving all the proposals at once would put the national budget under stress.

In 2022, the LGED proposed to add 6,257 rural roads, spanning 9,095 kilometres.

In 2021, a total of 1,700 rural roads spanning 2,593.75 kilometres were added to the list, following a three-year period (2018-20) when no new roads were included.

How road list gets longer

Insiders have noted that the decision to enlist such a substantial number of rural roads is aligned with the government's commitment to rural development in preparation for the upcoming national election.

Previously, prior to the 2018 parliamentary election, the LGED had categorised and classified 150,678 roads spanning 352,943.29 kilometres in November 2017 with emphasis on extension and improvement of existing roads.

This time, the emphasis is on including roads in the LGED list ahead of the election.

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On Sunday last, LGRD Minister Md Tazul Islam was learned to have instructed local-level officials to complete rural road maintenance works all over the country ahead of the national elections expected at the year-end or January next.

The LGED says they can do little because of insufficient budget. For the current fiscal year, Tk3,100 crore has been allocated for road maintenance.

LGRD officials said they instantly need an additional allocation of Tk1000 crore for road repair and the finance ministry has assured the amount.

Financing pressure to increase

The challenge, the officials argue, lies in allocating funds appropriately within the annual development programme (ADP) to fix all these roads.

Officials of the Planning Commission have highlighted that the LGED currently allocates Tk80 lakh to Tk1 crore for constructing each kilometre of road.

However, due to insufficient allocation, it was not possible to use the intended funds for the development of most designated roads in 2017. Consequently, there may be difficulties in funding development activities for new roads. Moreover, there is a risk that unimportant roads could be included in listings potentially leading to a waste of public money.

Dr Hossain Zillur Rahman, economist and former adviser to a caretaker government, has characterised the proposal to simultaneously enlist numerous roads as "unusual".

He said if the rural roads are listed in LGED in stages after proper inspection, it will be possible to carry out planned development.

Road listings without proper assessments might provide an opportunity for non-essential roads to be considered, and investing in the development of less important roads would likely result in inefficient resource utilisation, Zillur observed.

He also speculated that the wholesale listing of roads might have some other motives.

According to sources, the proposal for the new rural road inclusion is now under the scrutiny of the Physical Infrastructure Division of the Planning Commission.

Member of the division Dr Mohammad Emdad Ullah Mian, member of the Physical Infrastructure Division, told TBS, "Emphasis has been placed on the maintenance of the existing roads rather than the inclusion of new roads in the list. Now the roads that have come for enlistment, if listed together, will put pressure on the government's budget."

This is why the important roads will be listed in a priority phase following further assessment, he added.

A threat to environment, too

Akter Mahmud, a professor of Urban and Regional Planning at Jahangirnagar University, stressed the importance of conducting proper surveys before listing rural roads. Without adequate surveys, haphazard road construction could pose environmental threats, he said.

He cited the example of flooding in Haor areas due to ill-planned road development. Also, unplanned road constructions are causing waterlogging in villages.

Why LGED needs more roads

LGED officials told The Business Standard that the list of proposed roads has been compiled based on information from the district offices of the LGED across the country. Moreover, the local offices of the LGED conducted on-site inspections of the roads before the proposal was submitted to the Planning Commission.

Sheikh Mohammad Mohsin, chief engineer of the LGED, told TBS that the LGED takes care of rural communication development under the "My Village My Town" project.

Surveys on the project's technical aspects revealed an extensive list of roads connecting various rural areas throughout the country, which need to be included in the LGED's list, and the latest proposal has been made based on the recent survey, he added.

LGED officials emphasised that there is an urgent need to further develop these roads to ensure their utility.

As many villages are still disconnected from the developed paved road network, initiatives have been taken to put new identifications (IDs) on rural roads, they said, adding that each of the roads needs a unique number to qualify for allocation.

Poor quality works, high repair costs

Over the last few decades, rural areas across the country saw massive development in road connectivity, but most of the roads crumbled within a year requiring the LGED to spend at least a fifth of its annual budget on roadwork.  

Though road engineers put the blame on floods and heavily loaded vehicles for leaving the narrow, thin-layered rural roads with potholes, the quality of road work and materials used are also blamed.

An official of the Implementation, Monitoring, and Evaluation Division, the planning ministry's wing that oversees development projects, said inferior-grade bricks and sand are used in rural roads resulting in their short life. "It is often found that the original bidders subcontract the work and poor quality materials are used to save cost. Local LGED officials also have a hand in it," said the official, who wished not to be named.

The latest hikes in prices of construction materials further escalated the trend of using low-grade materials, said the official, blaming local LGED officials for their lax supervision.

Prof Akter Mahmud blamed unskilled contractors and corruption for the poor quality of rural road works. "Inexperienced contractors manage to get the work using a political lobby. Local LGED officials do not monitor the road work properly," the urban planner said.

However, Khandaker Golam Shawkat, LGED engineer of Shibpur Upazila of Madaripur, claimed the trend of using poor quality materials could largely be reduced after setting up labs for quality testing.

Around 65% or over 8,600km of rural roadways in the Chattogram district's 14 upazilas have become dilapidated due to damage caused by the August floods, incurring a repairing cost of Tk32.80 crore.

A TBS report from Jashore gave an account of how repair cost eats into every year's allocation for rural roads.  

Between FY17 and FY20, Jashore LGED, which maintains 2,231km of paved roads or a fourth of its total rural road network in the district, spent in the range of 22% to 47% of its annual budget on road repair.

In November 2020, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina asked the Local Government Division to formulate a master plan to renovate rural roads and check whether quality bitumen and other materials were being used and waterlogging issues were considered while constructing them.

A 2021 official gazette allowed LGED to construct 24-foot wide roads with a minimum thickness of 890mm, up from the current 582mm.