Road users across the country are suffering immensely due to dilapidated condition of roads and highways, with about 25,500 kilometres of roads and highways requiring repairs.
Over 24,000 kilometres of roads under the local government engineering department are currently in poor to bad condition, requiring rehabilitation to reconstruction woks, said officials.
About 1,500 kilometres of highways and roads under the roads and highways department require repairs, they added.
Passengers and transport workers said that they were facing immense sufferings and huge traffic congestion on potholed and damaged roads and highways especially on Sylhet, Jashore, Khulna, Bhanga, Chuadanga, Faridpur, Lalmonirhat, Tangail and Rangpur routes.
Officials of the departments blamed a lack of budget for maintenance of roads and highways for the situation.
They also said that as the duration of rainy season became longer due to climate change, the duration of maintenance of roads and highways became shorter.
A journey using the Dhaka-Sylhet national highway has turned into a nightmare, passengers said, adding that the journey time using the route tripled due to construction works in the Brahmanbaria-Sarail section.
Before the construction works started, it would take six to seven hours to cross the Dhaka-Sylhet route, but the journey nowadays often takes 16 hours, said passengers, transport owners and workers.
Zaved Arman, a resident of Khulna, said that the road stretches from Jashore to Khulna and Khulna to Rupsha Bridge were in a very bad condition.
Hasib Uddin, a passenger, said that people faced immense sufferings to cross the Bhanga-Jahsore, Jhenaidah-Chudanga, Jhenaidah-Khulna and Jhenaidah-Kushtia roads as these were in a very bad shape due to a lack of maintenance.
Currently the LGED, under the local government rural development and cooperatives ministry, has 4,11,137 kilometres of roads, including 36,772 kilometres of upazila, 42,102 kilometres of union and 3,32,261 kilometres village roads, under its jurisdiction.
Out of the road stretch, 1,61,322 kilometres or about 39 per cent are paved and the rest is dirt tracks.
Under the department, 35,576 kilometres of bituminous carpet and reinforced cement concrete roads now need maintenance.
Of these, 13,992 kilometres of roads are in bad condition requiring major rehabilitation or reconstruction works, 10,316 kilometres are in poor condition requiring overlay of another carpeting layer and 11,268 kilometres are in fair condition requiring reseal of the surface.聽
In the cases of divisions, 4,517 kilometres of roads are in poor and bad condition in Khulna, followed by 4,018km in Dhaka, 3,885km in Chattogram, 3,789km in Rajshahi, 3,386km in Rangpur, 1,765km in Barishal, 1,482km in Mymensingh and 1,461km in Sylhet.
According to the roads and highways department under the road transport and bridges ministry, the department has 22,719 kilometres of roads, including 4,293km of national highways, 5,039km of regional highways and 13,385km of zila highways, under its jurisdiction.
Earlier at an inter-ministry meeting held at the secretariat in the capital Dhaka on August 25, the road department鈥檚 chief engineer, Syed Moinul Hasan, said that about 1,500 kilometres of highways and roads under the department required repairs.
He told 抖阴精品 on Sunday that the areas of highways and roads requiring repairs at present remained the same as per their assumption, but they were now reviewing the data.
The roads under different city corporations and municipalities are not under the jurisdiction of both of the LGED and the RHD.
Bangladesh Road Transport Owner鈥檚 Association general secretary Md Saiful Alam said that in Sylhet, from Brahmanbaria to Ashuganj and Bhairab, the condition of roads was very bad due to construction works.
鈥楾here are even two- to three-feet potholes in which our buses鈥� wheels often fall, leaving passengers injured and damaging the buses,鈥� he said.
Saiful also said that due to increased journey time, passengers especially patients, women and elderly were also facing immense sufferings and the owners were facing losses for using an increased amount of fuel by buses for longer stay on roads.
鈥榃e will soon send a letter to the road transport and bridges ministry to repair the highways on an emergency basis,鈥� he said.
The transport leader also said that the roads under the LGED were somewhat in bad condition.聽
Roads and highways department chief engineer Syed Moinul Hasan said that on the Dhaka-Sylhet national highway, works of a project under the Indian Line of Credit were ongoing to upgrade the Arail-Ashuganj land port-Sarail-Khorkha-Akhaura land port road to four lanes.
As the projects under Indian LoC faced some complexities recently and due to a prolonged rainy season, difficulties in repairing the roads increased, he said.
Moinul also said that currently it became difficult to work more than five months (October-February) for road repairs due to a prolonged rainy season.
After the fall of the Awami League-led government in August 2024 in a mass rising, the projects under LoCs remained stalled for several months.
Dewan Abdus Sabur, executive engineer at the road and bridge maintenance unit of the local government engineering department, told 抖阴精品 on Sunday that in the 2025-2026 financial year, they got Tk聽3,300 crore to repair roads against the total demand for Tk 21,411 crore.
He also said that they got only four months to repair roads from November in the past four to five years amid a prolonged rainy season triggered by climate change.