Repairs Did Not Last Even Seven Days: Rangpur Road Fixed Hurriedly Before the Prime Minister's Visit Is Broken Again, Raising Questions Over Wasted Money

The repairs did not survive even seven days. Already the pitch has come off the road and the newly laid cement blocks have broken and crumbled. In places there are potholes; elsewhere the surface lies torn up — that is now the picture of the Rangpur-Dinajpur highway.

Yet only a few days earlier, those very sections had been hurriedly repaired for Prime Minister Tarique Rahman's visit to Rangpur. Now repair work is under way again on the same stretches, raising questions from local residents, pedestrians and drivers about the road's durability — along with allegations of public money being siphoned off.

The picture was seen across roughly two kilometres of the nearly 10-kilometre stretch of the Rangpur-Dinajpur highway from Paglapir to Medical Mor.

Ahead of the prime minister's October 20 visit to Rangpur to inspect the Sharodiya Durga festival, broken sections at more than a hundred spots on the highway were repaired over the preceding four days. Old brick bedding was lifted, new cement blocks were laid in its place, and a coating of pitch was applied on top.

Local people, drivers and pedestrians had expressed doubts about the durability of that rushed repair at the time. Within days, their fears proved true.

On the ground on Saturday, newly laid blocks were seen broken at several repaired sections. In places the pitch coating had come off and potholes had formed as before — and repair work was under way again at those very spots.

As a result, the same sections of the same road have to be repaired again and again within a short span of time, raising serious questions about the quality of the work and its supervision.

Nazmul Haque, a resident of the CO Bazar area, said: 'Here the road is repaired so that it can break again — so that repair work runs all year and officials and contractors keep earning well. Otherwise why would potholes be filled ten times a month, only for the holes to return within two days?'

Complaints about the quality of repair work on this highway are not new. According to the Roads and Highways Department, in the 2024-25 fiscal year Rajshahi's Don Enterprise received the contract to repair 17 kilometres of the Rangpur-Saidpur highway for Tk 26 crore 89 lakh 59 thousand 946.

From February 4 to July that year, repair work was carried out on a 10-kilometre section using the DBST method. Questions were raised about the quality of the work even then — and this latest episode looks like a continuation of those questions.

The authorities' explanation, however, points elsewhere. Md Kamal Pasha, sub-divisional engineer of the Rangpur Roads and Highways Department, said: 'Actually the foundation underneath this road is bad, so nothing lasts. There is no way other than building it anew.'

In other words, by the engineer's own admission, when the base itself is weak, repeatedly coating the surface cannot bring a lasting solution — the whole road needs to be rebuilt. Yet instead of that decision, the same kind of repair is being done yet again.

For local people, the question is now a single one: if the foundation is known to be bad, why is money being spent again and again on such repairs, and when will a decision come to rebuild this highway permanently? For now, Rangpur's people are watching to see how long the latest round of repairs lasts.