Truck terminal to be built at Benapole port

The government plans to build a cargo vehicle terminal at a cost of Tk 290 crore at Benapole port to create a new parking space for goods-laden trucks. 

The terminal to be built over 29.10 acres of land will be able to accommodate 1,250 trucks at a time and the project will be completed by June 2021.

The Executive Committee of National Economic Council (Ecnec) yesterday approved the project styled “Construction of cargo vehicle terminal at Benapole” in a meeting in the city’s Sher-e-Bangla Nagar with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in the chair.

According to the project document, the port handles 80 percent or Tk 20,000 crore worth of the cross-border trade between Bangladesh and India every year.

At least 500 Indian and 600 Bangladeshi trucks use the Benapole port every day, which are compelled to park on the port’s adjacent roads due to a lack of parking space, obstructing overall trade activities.

That is why building of a new vehicle terminal has become a must now for the country’s largest land port from which the state coffer earns Tk 4,000 crore in revenue every year, according to project papers.

On the day, the Ecnec approved a total of 12 projects, involving Tk 5,494 crore. Of them, five projects are revised.

One of the revised projects—Road widening and development of ECB intersection to Mirpur and construction of flyover at Kalshi intersection—was tabled for the revision within a year of the start of the implementation work.

The Ecnec extended the project by one and a half years to till June 2021 from December 2019 and revised up the cost by 65 percent to Tk 1,012 crore from Tk 612 crore now. According to the proposal, the design change of the project included new components, expansion of flyover length and increase in cost for additional land acquisition.

Similarly, the cost of a project to build a medical college and hospital has gone up by 72 percent to Tk 1,057 crore from Tk 615 crore.

The construction work of Colonel Malek Medical College in Manikganj started in July 2015 and was scheduled to be completed by June 2019. Now, the implementation period has been extended to June 2021.

The number of beds of the hospital has been doubled to 500 from initial 250 and a number of components have been included.

The Ecnec also gave go-ahead to a Tk 226 crore project titled “Construction of rest houses for drivers of goods-carrying vehicles on four national highways and to build sustainable and safe highways”.

Under the project, food, snacks, entertainment and sleeping facilities will be provided at the rest houses.

The four rest houses will be set up at Nimsar in Cumilla, Jagadishpur in Habiganj, Panchila in Sirajganj and Laxmikandor in Magura on four national highways from Dhaka to Chattogram, Sylhet, Rangpur and Khulna respectively, which are mostly used by export import vehicles.