The botched railway overpasses
If public money
can be obtained in such an easy way, then it seems that money for
government has
lost its all value
The project to construct two railway overpasses on the Dhaka-Chittagong four-lane highway, supposed to be completed by December this year, is far from being finished. Inefficiencies in completing mega-projects in Bangladesh are not a new phenomenon, but the point is, despite delayed projects one after another, the prevailing dilemmas in construction works has never been properly addressed.
The company which was awarded the contract for two railway overpasses on the Dhaka-Chittagong four-lane highway is reported to have been disappeared without completing works after receiving TK 1374.69 crore of the TK 2137.26 cr project - amounting to 64 per cent of the total project cost.
If public money can be obtained in such an easy way, then it seems that money for government has lost its all value. More dangerously, the governments concerned quarters responsible for overseeing the project seems to be doing nothing. On what grounds such vast amounts of funds got released in line with so little progress is a bewildering question. Wasnt the project being monitored? More importantly, on what parameters such an unreliable contractor selected and then awarded such an important piece of infrastructure?
According to the project director, the company hampered the worked. The point is: why wasnt the company stopped from operating when it was discovered to have impeding the work progress? Questions are many but there is unfortunately none to shoulder blames.
Furthermore, being approved by the ECNEC, the fourth revision of the Dhaka-Chittagong four-lane highway increased the project cost by around Tk. 626 crore to a total of Tk. 3,816.94 crore. According to the government watchdog, the project cost was increased several times due to late implementation time frames. The repeated revised project costs clearly suggests of the same reasons of delay occurring re-currently. Why werent the reasons behind the delays investigated?
Similarly, the project to construct the two overpasses over the Feni and Comilla railway crossings was awarded to a Bangladesh-Malaysian joint venture company that has vanished without completing the project. And it is still more surprising that the relevant authorities fail to track these companies.
Now, the authorities must come to its good senses for making the best use of public money. We expect our construction experts and law enforcers to investigate into the actual reasons behind the delays of our mega-projects and address them appropriately. Public money is hard earned and inept handling of projects must end.
