The shrinking of an eight-lane highway

It was welcome news when our Prime Minister inaugurated the upgrading of the Jatrabari-Kanchpur road to eight lanes. It was designed to ease congestion on the Chittagong-Dhaka and Dhaka-Sylhet highways. The project cost was 131.99 crore.

Yet it is with great dismay that we see that this huge expenditure and effort have come to naught. A report by this paper has found that the eight-lane highway has practically become a four-lane road. This is because a large portion of the highway has been illegally occupied by lorries and trucks on both sides, leaving the road as narrow as before. Thus it seems that this humungous project had been geared to provide a free parking zone for heavyweight vehicles!

This illegal occupation has lead to the median being broken at several points to create illegal U turns, slowing down traffic further. What is even more frightening is that the narrowing of the road has given reckless drivers an incentive to drive on the wrong side – a sure recipe for fatal accidents.

Now we must ask, why was this allowed to happen? It is unthinkable that the state does not have enough manpower to make sure that these highways are cleared of any illegal parking, let alone a permanent parking zone. What have the highway patrol been doing, have they not noticed this glaring anomaly?

After such a lot of fanfare surrounding this eight lane upgrade, the public, for whose benefit this project had been completed, is extremely disappointed by the apathy of the law enforcers that has allowed unscrupulous truck and lorry owners/drivers to blatantly flout the law and make the highway their own parking space. We are waiting for the authorities to immediately take action against the illegal occupiers and clear the highway.