My Road Trips in Bangladesh
By Habib Siddiqui
I have returned to the USA from Bangladesh after staying
there nearly three months. During my visit there I lost three close relatives;
the most devastating of which was the loss of my brother-in-law Bahar who was
married to my sister. He will always be missed in our family. He was a social
worker who had affected the lives of so many who would always miss him dearly.
Bahar died shortly after returning from Chennai Apollo
Hospital in India where he had undergone cancer treatment. Contrary to the false
hopes given by the hospital doctors his case proved to be incurable. The
hospital program coerced him into buying an expensive and lengthy treatment program
that obliged him into buying very costly medicines that were simply wasteful,
leaving a sense of being robbed monetarily. Soon after returning to Dhaka he
was admitted to the Combined Military Hospital in Dhaka where he died on July
27 before the Friday prayer. Before his burial in his ancestral land in a
suburb of Comilla, three funeral services were held in Dhaka, Comilla city and
his village, attended by thousands of people who knew him. I was able to see him
alive a day earlier but could not speak with him when he was already in the intensive
care unit. While those who attended his funeral prayers were ordinary masses,
some dignitaries did attend the services – showing Bahar’s connection at all
levels of the society.
The distance between Dhaka and Comilla is only about 100
kilometers. But the highway was so congested that it took us nearly four hours
to reach Bahar’s ancestral home, outside the Comilla city, just before sunset. After
his burial, hoping to return early, we left around 9 p.m. However, because of
the terrible traffic jam and gridlocks at multiple places we reached Dhaka
after 5:30 a.m. It was an awful experience for all the commuters that night!
In the last 20 years whenever I visited Bangladesh, I have
avoided traveling between Dhaka and Chittagong by road, and the experience in
July this year once again proved that my decision was rather wise. And this is
a sad commentary given all the government publicity and hoopla about miracles in
the road communication sector inside Bangladesh under the current administration.
Truly, if the Communications Minister had put more time into ensuring the
success of the government projects than badmouthing opposition parties the
commuters would have benefitted and thanked the government. But the reality of
a daily commuter in Bangladesh is quite different than those portrayed by the
government.
I could understand why the commuters condemn, cuss or curse
the government for its massive failure in the public sector where corruption is
so rampant. I was told by many contractors that more than half of the allotted fund
for construction projects ends up being gulped by government agencies and
politicians before they see it. I am told that less than a quarter of the
allotted money is spent on the project, thus leaving the newly constructed
roads and highways quite vulnerable. That possibly explains why in a report on June 20, 2017, in which
the World Bank presented a list of infrastructure cost, especially in road
construction, it shows the cost of per kilometer road construction is $2.5
million to $11.9 million in Bangladesh, which is the highest in the
world. This cost
of construction is simply mind-blowing given the fact that the labor cost
in Bangladesh is one of the lowest in the world. [Note: A four-lane highway costs $1.1m to $1.3m a km in India and $1.3m-$1.6m in
China.]
Most of the large government projects these days are given
to the Chinese contractors who continue to make a very bad name for themselves in
the construction sector. They have been accused amongst other things of unfair price-gouging,
dragging and slowing down projects to maximize their gains. Thus, within a very
short period, these newly constructed roads and highways are inundated with potholes.
Most Indian convoys of lorries that are using Bangladesh as a transit to move their
goods are overloaded, beyond the design capacity of the roads and highways
being built, compounding the problem further. Unless such abuses of Indian
lorries are stopped it would be impossible to stop the premature destruction of
the roads and highways. I am also told that Sheikh Hasina government’s more-than-generous
policy with the Indian transportation of goods and materials have had a very
negative impact on Bangladesh economy.
One of my nephews works with the Rohingya refugees for an
international NGO. He lives in Cox’s Bazar, only about 150 kilometers south of
the port city of Chittagong. Cox’s Bazar beach, long known for fishing and
tourism, is sandy and has a gentle
slope with an unbroken length of 120 km (75 miles); it is the longest
natural sea beach in the world. He and his wife insisted that I visit Cox’s
Bazar. Since I have not been to the area in more than four decades, I could not
reject their invitation. We left very early in the morning by a private car to
avoid heavy traffic, but still it took us nearly five hours to reach the town.
I recall that in the 1970s, when I travelled with my parents
and siblings it took us only three hours to reach Cox’s Bazar from Chittagong.
These days, the traffic on the road connecting the two cities has grown several
folds while the condition of the road has deteriorated severely, and as I have
noticed elsewhere, it was full of potholes, some as deep as a foot. In order to
skip some of these deep potholes, drivers were often driving on the wrong side
of road, thus, making the entire traveling experience a very risky and tiring one,
taking away all the charms out of visiting scenic Cox’s Bazar.
After spending some hours in the city, we planned on going towards
Ukhia, located further down south. Bangladesh Army Engineers have done a superb
job in connecting Ukhia and Teknaf to Cox’s Bazar town with a scenic two-lane
road that goes by the shoreline. However, getting to that Marine Drive meant driving
through a two km-long road connecting Marine Drive to Cox’s Bazar town that was
full of potholes. It was one of the worst roads I have ever travelled in my
life. What concerned me most is that nearly half the traffic on that road comprised
of vehicles belonging to the UN and NGOs – local and international – that are
trying to provide material help to the persecuted Rohingya refugees settled in
Teknaf and Ukhia camps. What impression are these foreign visitors making about
Bangladesh, the host country of the Rohingya refugees? Surely, a very bad
impression!
Any concerned local administration should have realized the
importance of that connecting road and made sure that it remained functional.
Sadly, the local municipality has miserably failed in that vital task and is
leaving its visitors with a very negative impression about the local government.
Such an oversight from municipal and government authorities is simply
inexcusable when hundreds of thousands of foreigners are visiting Cox’s Bazar
to provide the necessary material aid to the most persecuted Rohingya who had
fled to Bangladesh to escape genocide in Myanmar.
What was supposed to be a short ride took several minutes,
and my body was aching from the bumpy ride over the potholes in a private car before
we entered the Marine Drive. After a few minutes of ride along the scenic Marine
Drive, we stopped by the coast of the Bay of Bengal to enjoy its natural
beauty. Before sunset, we headed back home for Chittagong city. The ride took
longer time and we arrived in Khulshi after five hours and a half.
On our way back home at night, I noticed that more than 80%
of the trucks and buses were operationally unfit (most did not have tail
lights, brake lights and signal lights) and should not have been permitted to
drive on the roads and highways. The potholes were making everyone’s drive a
dangerous one, let alone a difficult one, esp. for those unfit buses and trucks,
driven sometimes by reckless drivers who seemed to care less about saving
lives.
As I have already noted in an earlier article, roads and
highways in Bangladesh remain some of the most dangerous in the world. The Government
of Bangladesh needs to make its communication system safer for its commuters
and every citizen failing which more people will die from traffic accidents. It
can start that process with the much-needed fitness tests on trucks and buses
and road repair/maintenance jobs. Seemingly, road repair or maintenance work is
not a priority or profitable enough business to the greedy ones who have had illicitly
made millions from the misery of commuters compared to a full job on the roads
when they could have a bigger share of their Hari-loot! This vulture-like
attitude of corrupt government officials, politicians and their clients is not
only unhealthy, it is simply suicidal for a poor country like Bangladesh.
Comments
Post a Comment