Three projects
I saw a report a few days back in most of the national dailies that the government is planning to have metro rail or subway at Dhaka city. Indeed this is very good news for 125 million city dwellers. But if I am not wrong the then 4 party government also initiated this mega project to save the commuters of Dhaka city from the trouble of long traffic congestion. Lots of studies have been carried out in the last five years to ease the traffic jam & a Strategic Transport Plan has been chalked out to get rid of this acute problem. Experts observed that metro rail or subway would be the best solution for the huge population. I would like to draw a few points on a recent statement made by our communications minister in parliament on this mega project. He has informed the Jatiya Sansad that the government is planning to implement this project, which must be appreciated. In Bangladesh, this is a completely new concept & I am afraid whether proper feasibility study has been carried out or not. To the best of my knowledge, this subway train requires uninterrupted power supply to run to & from. On the other hand, a local firm has put forward a proposal for Letter of Intent to the government. It is not clear whether this local company has any previous experience of this sort of job. Our honourable communications minister has also informed parliament that they are going to start another mega project "Padma Multipurpose Bridge Project" by next year which will cost around Tk 11, 000 crore approx. So far I have seen that the government has by this time got commitment of about Tk 7,000 crore from donors like World Bank, ADB, JICA & Kuwait Fund for Development , the rest 4,000 crore is yet to be collected from other sources. As we all know that global recession is persisting & the effect of it has already been felt in the USA, Europe and South East Asia. "Padma Multipurpose Bridge Project" is also an election pledge of this government & we hope that this government will try to implement this project as 75 % of funds has already been committed by major donors. But the subway or metro rail would require another approx Tk 7,000 to 9,000 crore to complete the whole project.
Besides this, we have another burning problem standing in front of us which is shortage of power. This is the most challenging job of this government and as such they have already initiated negotiations with Russia for nuclear power plants of 1,000mw capacity each. We understand that a MoU is likely to be signed with Russia on the nuclear power plant. This according to experts would roughly require about Tk 10,000 crore. When these two vital projects need implementation on a priority basis, then the talk of another mega project like metro rail or subway seems to be irrational.
As a citizen, I would appreciate if the sources of these funds are made public by the ministries concerned. My personal view is that the present global recession will continue till 2010. So, we have to be cautious. To conclude, I must say that I am an optimist but all these development projects together look like a dream, not reality.
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