Most of the bridges on national and regional highways in the country are in a poor state in the absence of any repair work by the authority concerned since their construction, sources said.
The bridges measuring less than 1.5 kilometres in length are under the Roads and Highways Department (RHD).
Sources said the RHD receives budgetary allocation for road maintenance, but not a single penny has so far been spent on maintenance and repair work of any of the bridges.
The RHD built nearly 4,400 small and large bridges on national highways and regional roads in last 45 years to ensure smooth traffic throughout the country.
Officials, however, said allocation is made in the national budget every year for carrying out regular maintenance and repair work on the existing national highways and regional roads.
"We always get far lower allocation than the demand for road maintenance in the national budget every year. So, there is no scope of carrying out bridge maintenance work," said a senior official preferring anonymity.
But sources claimed that the RHD never sought any budgetary allocation focusing on the repair and maintenance of bridges on the national and regional highways.
"The concept of bridge repair and maintenance never exists in the RHD," said an engineer.
But many of those bridges have become vulnerable in the absence of repair or maintenance work and also in the absence of any control on overloaded vehicles.
At least eight of these bridges are large infrastructure on important national highways. These include Pakshi bridge, Karnaphuli bridge, Teesta bridge, Miabazar bridge, and Sultana Kamal bridge. Each of these large bridges under the RHD is less than 1.5 kilometres long.
The RHD had to spend Tk 4.25 billion on maintenance of two bridges over the Meghna and Gumti rivers in 2013 to protect them from damages for the time being. These two bridges are on the Dhaka-Chittagong highway, the most important part of the country's road network.
The RHD is now constructing three new bridges -- Kanchpur bridge, Meghna bridge and Meghna-Gumti bridge -- along with rehabilitation of old bridges at a cost of Tk 60 billion.
The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has improved the condition of over 100 small bridges in the eastern zone of the country. It has also helped in repairing 68 bridges in the western zone.
Sources said though RHD has a wing to construct bridges less than 1.5km in length, it has introduced no system to conduct periodical inspection on them.
The Highway Data Management wing of the RHD surveys all the national highways and roads every year to assess their condition and prepares a report so that all related wings can take necessary actions accordingly.
An RHD official, however, said the department has already taken a move to increase the RHD's capacity under a 'technical' project with support of the JICA to ensure management and maintenance of bridges under the department.
smunima@yahoo.com