STUDENTS' CORNER - 223
Challenges faced
in maintaining roads
Transport of freight and passengers has become
inevitable today, personally and professionally; personally in the sense one
has to go to the place of work or one has to go to market to get things needed
for everyday routine. Business is the key word today; everybody is in it in one
way or another and business activity heavily depends on movement of things and
persons. In all countries the road
network keeps growing. In other words,
transport by air, sea and land has become integral to our living. Used roads get worn out and also become
damaged. Maintenance of roads cannot be ignored in the interest of both comfort
and commerce.
Funding the maintenance of the road network
looms large as a primary problem in maintaining roads. The governments try many
strategies to face out the funding issue of the roads maintenance and the most
popular one is use of contractors. Of course it has not been found very useful
in the sense that many contracts remain incomplete despite bank loans; banks
normally do not hesitate to sanction loans if a contractor produces government
approval for his contract. But it is unfortunate that many contracts do not get
completed though the approved and sanctioned funds have been exhausted in the
work which remains incomplete. The end result is the money spent remains sunk
money with no use for the public.
Projects
are conceived and designed for the benefit of the public only but incomplete
projects deprive the public of the advantages which the project envisaged. Of
course lot of studies have been conducted to find out the reasons for the
failure of the projects and the results only prove that unfair exploitation of
the privilege by the authorities , the contractors and so on.
Toll gates are strategic device to generate
funds for the maintenance of the roads.
Whatever may be the source of revenue, strict monitoring is required so
that the waste of money—in the form of corruption, misappropriation etc.—can be
minimal.
Simply, roads are silent assets for the
citizens, the contractors, the transporters of all kinds and the assets demand
careful maintenance and discreet use. If roads are not properly used and
maintained for whatever reasons, the losers are the people in the form of
accidents or of cost hikes. Roads like
assets must be sustained like businesses and even human relationships through
fair and relevant use.
We will see some more points in the
maintenance of roads in our next and be done with it because the subject is as
long as any national highways can be.
