10 MPs to visit Japan to meet Jica high-ups

Ten ruling Awami League (AL)-led grand alliance lawmakers, who are members of Bangladesh-Japan Parliamentary Friendship Group, will visit Japan soon to persuade top officials of Japan International Cooperation Agency (Jica) not to cancel its funding for the Padma bridge project.
The group, at a meeting yesterday, also decided to host a dinner 'very soon' in honour of Japanese Ambassador in Dhaka Shiro Sadoshima and Jica officials in the capital in connection with Japan's funding in the mega project.
“We have asked the foreign ministry officials to work on the Japan visit soon,” AL lawmaker Md Zillul Hakim, also chief of the group, told The Daily Star after the meeting at the Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban.
“We have planned to meet with the Jica top officials. We will convince them so that they do not stop funding the Padma bridge project following the corruption allegation raised by the World Bank,” he said.
Jafrul Islam Chowdhury, the lone opposition lawmaker in the group, however, told The Daily Star that he is yet to decide on the Japan visit issue.
The group was formed last year to enhance relations between Bangladesh and Japan.
On July 11, a senior Jica official in Dhaka said the agency's funding for the Padma bridge project would depend on the government's constructive steps against the corruption allegation, which led to the cancellation of funding commitment for the project by World Bank and Asian Development Bank.
Jica is one of the co-financiers of the project with a funding commitment of US$400 million.