BRT Project Scrapped After 97 Percent of Work Done: Gazipur Journalists’ Forum Demands Reconsideration
The controversy over cancelling the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project from the airport to Gazipur after nearly 97 percent of its work had been completed grew further on Saturday. The Dhaka-based Gazipur Journalists’ Forum demanded a reconsideration of the decision to cancel the project and demolish its infrastructure. The forum’s leaders said that if there were irregularities, corruption or planning flaws in the project, those responsible should be punished through a neutral investigation; but before demolishing nearly finished infrastructure, its justification and impact must be assessed transparently.
The demand was raised at a roundtable held at the National Press Club. Speakers said the people of Gazipur and Uttara have endured traffic congestion and suffering for 14 years because of the construction work. If the infrastructure is now demolished and a new road built, that suffering will only increase — meaning the very hardship the cancellation was meant to end could return in a new form.
At the meeting, Gazipur-3 MP and BNP leader Professor S M Rafiqul Islam Bachchu said the BRT project had been taken up in an unplanned manner. With proper planning and coordination, he said, it could have benefited the people. His remarks made one point clear — the blame for the project’s failure lies with its planning, yet the question remains why ordinary people should pay the price of that failure again.
Gazipur-4 (Kapasia) MP Salahuddin Ayyubi said the real question now is what transport facilities the people of Gazipur will be given after the project’s cancellation. So merely announcing the cancellation is not enough; what the alternative arrangement will be must be made clear.
Speakers at the meeting also said that if the project has weaknesses, the option of correcting them and using it in the public interest should also be considered. Before demolishing the infrastructure and building a new highway, the economic, technical and public-interest aspects need to be reviewed — because once demolished, that infrastructure can never be recovered.
Earlier, in a statement last Tuesday, the forum’s president Faisal Alam and general secretary Rashedul Haque had made the same demand. Calling for the reasons behind the decision to be made public, the statement said people from 18 districts including Gazipur travel along this highway, and fresh construction would increase everyone’s suffering.
The decision to cancel the project was taken on October 18 at a cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Tarique Rahman. The next day, the decision was communicated through a letter signed by Taslima Ahmed Poli, deputy secretary of the BRT branch of the Road Transport and Highways Division.
The letter said the corridor’s stations and lane dividers would be removed to make a general highway of six lanes in total, three on each side. Two two-lane overpasses would also be upgraded to four lanes. Instructions were given to take urgent steps to implement the decision, for the concerned offices to send progress reports within 15 days, and to formally close the project after resolving legal complications in discussion with development partners.
The roughly 20-kilometre BRT project was taken up in 2012. The plan was for special buses to run in dedicated lanes in the middle of the road from the airport to Shib Bari in Gazipur. The work was supposed to be completed in 2016, that is, within four years. Ten more years have passed beyond that deadline, yet not a single bus has run to this day.
The project was financed by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the French Development Agency (AFD) and the Global Environment Facility (GEF). Implementation rested with the Roads and Highways Department, the Bridges Division and the Local Government Engineering Department (LGED). Experts have identified this three-way division of responsibility as a major cause of the lack of coordination.
The money figures are startling too. The project cost was initially estimated at about Tk 2,040 crore. After three revisions it stood at Tk 4,268 crore — the cost more than doubled, at over Tk 213 crore per kilometre. So far Tk 2,811 crore has been spent, about two-thirds of the total allocation.
The failure of this project has affected other projects as well. Another BRT route from Uttara to Keraniganj was supposed to be built with World Bank financing; because the Gazipur-airport section was not launched in time, that project was cancelled too.
An expert team led by Professor Shamsul Haque of BUET’s civil engineering department reviewed the project’s technical aspects and reported planning and design flaws along with a lack of coordination among the agencies. Their recommendation was to cancel the project and use the existing infrastructure as an upgraded highway. On the other hand, another organisation named ‘Gazipur Oitijhya O Unnayan’ has also objected to the cancellation after the work was nearly 97 percent complete. As a result, the debate over the huge public expenditure, the long public suffering and the future of the nearly finished infrastructure is now at its peak — and all eyes are on how the government responds to it.
