Over 700 kilometres of city roads and footpaths remained excavated for several months causing immense sufferings to commuters as well as residents during this time of rain.

The city corporations as well as the utility providing agencies and few individual dug these roads for different purposes at different times apparently without any coordination among them, residents said.

They said that the excavated roads caused immense sufferings for them for the last couple of months and contributed to waterlogging throughout the rainy season.

Dhaka North City mayor Md Atiqul Islam said that the roads were excavated before onset of the COVD-19 epidemic for different purposes and added that the roads remained excavated as construction halted due to COVID-19 and the rain afterwards.

‘We are going to restart the work soon after the rainy season was behind us,’ he added.

He said that the city corporation as well as the agencies were given an ultimatum to complete their work at the soonest possible time.

Atiqul said that the city corporation was supposed to carry out construction work from April to June, not during the wet season.

The Dhaka City Road Digging Rules 2019 discourages road cutting in the rainy months of June, July, August, September and October.

According to the rules no agency should keep road excavated for more than 30 days.

But residents said that even the city corporation kept many roads excavated for more than 10 months without keeping minimum space for them to move.

They also said that different agencies start digging soon after another agency repaired the road.

In July 2016, a circular issued from the Prime Minister’s Office empowered city mayor to coordinate development activities of the agencies in Dhaka to ease public sufferings.

Meanwhile, government’s mega projects, including elevated expressway and metro rail also excavated more than 30 kilometres of thoroughfares for more than six years in many locations, said officials.

DNCC superintending engineer Khondoker Mahbub Alam said that at least 10km road of DNCC area was dug for only metro rail.

Officials said that the coordination meeting also remained suspended for over a year while in the meeting the utility providing agencies’ high-up had remained absent.

Moving around Dhaka last week’s continuous downpour at the end of the rainy season, commuting at Mohammadpure, Dhanmondi, Mirpur, Kakrail, Malibagh and Mohanagar areas became extremely hazardous.

Dhaka South City Corporation and Dhaka North City Corporation along with most utility service providers started digging up roads for road, drainage, footpath and various other construction works.

Officials said that more than 700km roads and footpaths of the city remained excavated this time out of 3,000km road connectivity.

They said that besides the city corporation, Dhaka WASA, DPDC, Titas and other utility providing agencies also excavated a number of roads.

At Dhanmondi’s Sat Mosjid Road and over half of a dozen of other roads in the area were seen kept haphazardly dug, some by the agencies but mostly by the city corporation. It is either for road renovation or the construction of footpaths or both that these roads were dug.

Ahsan Imran Shamin, a resident of Bashbari of the area said that the road was kept neglected for over 10 months.

He said that the city corporation appointed a contractor that excavated major part of the road for repairing, but the road remained undone even after nine months.

DSCC engineers said that they asked all agencies concerned to submit necessary road cutting permission at the same time, but the agencies seek permission at different times.

Dhaka WASA director AKM Shahid Uddin said that Dhaka WASA dug some roads mostly for implementing District Metered Area (DMA) project while other area for storm sewer lines.