Dhaka gives nod to US$3 bn metro
link By Syed Tashfin Chowdhury
DHAKA - The Bangladesh government has
given the go-ahead for a US$2.7 billion elevated
metro rail project that will help to speed-up
commuter travel in the sprawling, often
grid-locked, capital. The decision last month
comes weeks after Japan approved a US$2.1 billion
soft loan for the project via the Japan
International Cooperation Agency (JICA).
The rail development will be Bangladesh's
second-biggest infrastructure project after the
Padma Multipurpose Bridge
designed to improve links
between Dhaka and the west of the country but
whose construction is yet to begin after five
years of delays, with corruption claims the latest
bar to its progress.
The 20.1 kilometer
elevated railway track will link the suburb area
of Uttara, in the north of Dhaka to Mirpur, a
largely residential area in the west of the city,
and cross to Motijheel, the commercial and
ministerial hub in the southeast of Dhaka, helping
to slash transport times in a city whose
population is put at around 12 million.
Construction may begin as soon as 2013.
At
present it can take two to three hours to travel
by bus the 20 kilometers between Uttara and
Motijheel. The 15 kilometers from Mirpur to
Motijheel takes nearly two hours.
Bangladesh's planning ministry says the
first phase of 11 kilometers of railway track will
be laid from Pallabi in Mirpur to Sonargaon Hotel
near the heart of the city by 2019. In the second
phase, a 4.4-kilometer line will be installed from
Sonargaon Hotel to the Bangladesh Bank area of
Motijheel by 2020. The final phase will see 4.7
kilometer laid from Uttara to Pallabi; this may
take until 2022 with overall completion targeted
by June 2024.
Tokyo has already approved
$133 million for the project during the current
fiscal year. JICA will aid the Bangladesh
government in overall implementation of the
project, after helping to establish a similar
system in Kolkata in India.
In
2010, a JICA a study found that a metro rail
could operate a service running every three minutes
to carry 60,000 passengers in an hour, but
the present project was stalled for the past three years
due to confusion over the route, which has been
modified twice already. The last time was in 2011,
when the Bangladesh Air Force objected to the
route going through Bijoy Sharani, the area of an
old airport used by the military. The route was
diverted toward the nearby Khamarbari area,
raising concern it might mar the view from the
country's parliamentary buildings.
A
senior official of the Dhaka Transport
Coordination Authority, which will oversee the
project under the Ministry of Communication, told
Asia Times Online that a number of international
companies have submitted technical and financial
proposals to the government. "We are awaiting
JICA's approval on these. After appointing a
consultant company by July 2013, we would know
when the constructions would official begin," he
said.
A civil engineering expert in
Bangladesh said he hoped the project will be
completed within schedule time, unlike the $2.9
billion Padma Multipurpose Bridge, part of wider
plans to improve Dhaka's infrastructure that have
made little progress over the past four years.
"The MRT is part of a government 20-year
comprehensive Strategic Transport Plan (STP)
envisioning an effective transport system
coordinating road, railway and water transport
systems over a 17,500 square kilometer area
including Dhaka and its neighboring districts of
Narayanganj, Gazipur, Munshiganj, Narsingdi and
Manikganj," said Mohammed Shamsul Hoque, head of
the Transport Division of Bangladesh University of
Engineering and Technology. He said that although
the STP was officially launched in August 2008,
most STP work has been held up for the past four
years.
"Besides three MRT routes, the STP
also recommended three Bus Rapid Transits along
with other recommendations," he said. As the
implementation of the STP becomes bleaker with
every year, "the implementation of the MRT will
certainly be a step in the right direction."
The Padma Multipurpose Bridge was
initially approved by the executive committee of
the National Economic Council in the autumn of
2007 at an estimated cost of $1.24 billion. The
caretaker government then in power conducted the
design work with the financial assistance of the
Asian Development Bank (ADB).
The project
gathered dust over the next four years until in
2011, when, although the project's estimated costs
had risen to $2.9 billion, deals were signed
between the government and development partners
the World Bank, JICA, the Islamic Development Bank
and the ADB. The four partners were to provide a
total loan of $2.3 billion together, with World
Bank alone lending $1.2 billion. Construction was
slated to begin last year.
Then on June
29, 2012, the World Bank cancelled its $1.2
billion credit line, alleging corruption in
rewarding a contract to SNC-Lavalin, a Canadian
firm, involving former communications minister
Syed Abul Hossain and four other government
officials linked to the project.
The World
Bank later agreed to fund the project, provided
the Bangladesh government conducts a thorough
investigation into the corruption allegations. The
investigation is still going on.
Syed Tashfin Chowdhury is the
Editor of Xtra, the weekend magazine of New Age,
in Bangladesh.
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