Long-awaited project to complete finally

After repeated revision of deadlines and costs, the long-awaited Joydevpur-Elenga Highway project is finally nearing completion and even at a slightly lower expenditure.

In order to complete some last stage tasks, the project, however, will be placed today at the meeting of the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (Ecnec).

According to the planning ministry's revised project proposal, the project cost will be Tk 6,168 crore, a decrease of Tk 46 crore from the previous estimate.

The Roads and Highways Department (RHD), the implementation agency, will, however, seek an extension of the deadline for the fifth time, to December 2022 from June this year. 

Talking to The Daily Star, Md Mamun-Al-Rashid, a member of the planning commission, said, "The project work is almost complete. The deadline has been extended to carry out some last-stage tasks."

He said that despite the delay, the construction has been fine. 

The project was undertaken in 2013 to enable smooth communication between Dhaka and the northern part of Bangladesh via the Bangabandhu Bridge. But the delay in completing the project on time has caused immense suffering to the people who use the road.

However, the project is a typical example of how poor planning can drive up costs and cause implementation delays.

The upgradation of the 70-kilometre road to a four-lane highway was scheduled to be completed by March 2018 at a cost of Tk 2,788 crore. The fourth revision saw the expenditure go up to Tk 6,214 crore and the tenure extend to June 2022.

A government report cites a lack of advanced planning in the development project proposal (DPP) for the project. Had it been better planned, the cost of land acquisition, in particular, and other expenses would have been much lower. 

It was specifically a failure not to carry out the feasibility study properly as well as prepare the DPP without following the study and identifying the elements of the project initially, said an assessment report of the Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division in 2018.

The report mentioned the delay in land acquisition and relocating existing utility lines, non-implementation of environmental impact assessment, lack of planning in procuring goods, slow pace of construction work, and absence of measures to control overweight as other weaknesses of the project.

In the proposed revision, the expenditure has been cut by Tk 46 crore.

"Some components have seen an increase in expenditure and others have seen a decrease. The shelving of foreign trips due to the coronavirus pandemic has seen the cost drop by Tk 4.5 crore," said Rashid.

Khan Ahmed Shuvo, president of the Tangail Chamber of Commerce & Industry, and a lawmaker, said thanks to the full operation of the important highway, the road communication system in this part of the country would be greatly improved and trade and commerce would be expanded.

"It will also be easier to transport goods from different districts to the capital."

The cost of the project titled "Acquiring land and relocating utility service lines for widening the Dhaka-Sylhet-Tamabil highway" has doubled. The project will be placed at the Ecnec meeting as well.

The Tk 3,885-crore project was taken up in 2018. And in October 2018, the Ecnec approved the project to acquire 986.47 acres of land and relocate utility service lines. However, the authorities need another 396 acres of land, according to the revised proposal.

So, the implementing agency will seek a revision of the cost to Tk 7,975 crore and an extension of the deadline by two years to December 2023.

The aim of the project is to complete the legwork in advance as these issues often cause delays so that the expansion work can start as soon as separate projects are approved.

Two separate projects have already been taken up by the RHD to turn the Dhaka-Sylhet and the Sylhet-Tamabil highways into dual carriageways with separate lanes for slow-moving vehicles involving Tk 20,500 crore, funded by the Asian Development Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. 

The projects are likely to face delays as the revised project for clearing the land will end in June 2023 and cost 105 per cent more money.

"The project cost has gone up as more land has to be acquired to fix the alignment of the highways," Rashid said.