Bridge on Kacha River in Pirojpur: Wait gets stretched to a year and half
Thanks to slow progress in construction work, people of Pirojpur will not see their much-awaited bridge on the Kacha river inaugurated this month.
The Eighth Bangladesh-China Friendship Bridge, 998 metres in length, was scheduled to be opened this month. With the lion's share of its funding provided by China, its work started in October 2017.
China Railway 17th Bureau Groups Co Ltd is building the 13.40-metre-wide bridge, which will have a total of 1.451 kilometres of approach road. Its estimated price tag is around Tk 822 crore.
But between March and June last year, when the Covid-19 pandemic was spreading like a wildfire in the country, the work slowed to a snail's pace.
Though the work is now back in full swing, the deadline for its completion is going to be extended to June 2022, said Masud Mahmud Sumon, executive engineer of Roads and Highways Department in Pirojpur.
All the nine piers of the bridge have already been completed and the work on its superstructure will start this month (January), he also said.
Even though their long wait is being stretched to almost another year and a half, residents of Pirojpur town hope that the bridge will usher in a new era of development in the region and facilitate faster communications with the divisional headquarters in Barishal.
It takes residents of Pirojpur town less time to reach Khulna city than to reach the closest larger city, Barishal, after taking ferries to cross the Kacha river on way to Barishal, they said.
They had not been able to take critical patients to larger medical facilities in Barishal as the wait at the ferry terminal can take as long as one hour or even longer at nights.
Adding to the sufferings of passengers travelling between Barishal and Khulna via Pirojpur, each ferry, while operating in the night time, waits for an indefinite period at the terminal until it is full to its capacity.
"So, we have been asking for a bridge over the Kacha river for years," said Mainul Ahsan Munna, a resident of Pirojpur town.
Habibur Rahman Malek, president of Pirojpur Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said with the completion of the Eighth Bangladesh-China Friendship Bridge, more job opportunities will be created at new mills and factories, which will help expedite economic development in Pirojpur and the country's southern region.
Comments