Why spend crores if you won’t finish the projects?

We are puzzled by Bangladesh Water Development Board's (BWDB) excavation strategy for the country's rivers and canals. According to a report by this daily, over Tk 23 crore was spent last year to excavate a 65km stretch of rivers and canals in five upazilas of Lalmonirhat. But the excavated earth, piled up on the banks, made their way back into the water bodies, rendering the project redundant.

Moreover, the project was not even completed as per the original plan. Initially, a work order of over Tk 35 crore was given to contractors for the re-excavation of a 98.1km stretch of small rivers and canals in the five upazilas. However, only 66 percent of the work had been done by the project's deadline, which was June last year. Though the Lalmonirhat Water Development Board refunded around Tk 16 crore to the government, the fact remains that this was a most poorly done job, through and through.

While excavating rivers and canals to improve navigability is done routinely in Bangladesh, it is rarely ever successful. Either the work is done inefficiently by the relevant board and contractors, or the project is left unfinished. Unfortunately, both of these have happened for the case in point.

As to why the excavation work was unsuccessful on their end, the executive engineer of Lalmonirhat Water Development Board said the contractor could not work fully due to obstruction by the land owners along the rivers and canals. Are we to believe that an organisation under the government lacks the tact and resources to work around such issues? We are beginning to doubt how important these organisations deemed the excavation project to be, given how they let their work—and crores of public money—be lost for nothing. Unfortunately, this is not an outlying event and is proof that the BWDB is perhaps not learning from its past failures in terms of river excavation. In 2020, it had reportedly excavated an 80km stretch of the Charalkantha River in Nilphamari, only for the dug-up earth to flow back in and re-obstruct the river's flow, even narrowing it down to a mere channel in places.

Not only do such poorly done projects waste public money, but they also exacerbate the suffering of citizens. The BWDB and its district offices must be held to account for their inefficiency. It's not acceptable that funds and time should be wasted in this way while officials move on to the next large-scale, government-funded project—only to presumably do that ineffectively, too.