Tuhin Shubhra Adhikary

All public, private and autonomous offices will remain closed for a week from April 14, says a Cabinet Division proposal aimed at curbing the sharp rise in Covid-19 cases and deaths.

Works of the fast-track projects will continue amid the strict lockdown to be imposed from Wednesday to contain the sharp rise of Covid-19 cases and deaths.

With no directive about the two days between the “lockdowns”, many said they were confused as to what would happen on April 12 and 13.

The ongoing restrictions to curb the Covid-19 surge across the country are showing signs of failure everywhere.

The government yesterday decided to resume public transport services in all 11 cities in the country from today, barely a couple of days after it imposed the weeklong restrictions to curb the spread of Covid-19.

Residents in the capital yesterday worked themselves into a frenzy to stock up on food supplies and household essentials ahead of the weeklong restrictions on transport and public movement from today.

Thousands of people in different parts of the capital suffered badly after being hit by a severe gas crisis as a Titas connection was damaged in Amin Bazar on the outskirts of the city on Monday night.

The alignment of the proposed high-speed train between Dhaka and Chittagong is likely to be changed.

A bottleneck on the rail route between Dhaka and the country’s north-western and southern regions is unlikely to go away anytime soon as one of the two projects aimed at improving the track capacity are stuck in limbo due to delayed loan negotiations and a cost-cutting directive.

Two Chinese companies have expressed interest in forming a joint venture to construct, operate and manage funds for a proposed high-speed railway on the Dhaka-Chattogram route.

The two-lane Dhaka-Tangail-Rangpur highway that is being turned into a four-lane one has been selected for charging toll from those plying it.

South Korean Hyundai Rotem Company has supplied 10 locomotives to Bangladesh Railway deviating from some clauses of the contract, a probe committee has found.

The bottleneck in distribution of smart driving licences is likely to ease as a new vendor of Bangladesh Road Transport Authority starts the distribution process today.

Two new project proposals, including one on the operation and maintenance of Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport (HSIA), will be placed at a high-level meeting between representatives of Bangladesh and Japan today and there will be discussion whether those can be implemented under public private partnership (PPP).

In a rare move, the railways ministry yesterday changed the directors of 17 projects of Bangladesh Railway, aiming to facilitate their quick implementation.

Leaders of road transport associations yesterday demanded the government increase bus fares and give them financial benefits as their businesses were “hit hard by the pandemic”.

Ignoring its own probe committee’s recommendation to take punitive measures against 21 officials for purchase anomalies, the railways ministry has promoted one of them and started the process for another.

As road safety authority failed to achieve the target to halve the number of road accident fatalities by last year, it is now going to extend the deadline by another 10 years.

The Padma Bridge Rail Link Project, the biggest project of Bangladesh Railway, is facing several challenges that may have an adverse impact on its cost and duration, officials said.

The government is likely to start collecting tolls from vehicles using the country’s first expressway -- Dhaka-Mawa-Bhanga Expressway -- from July.