Bangladesh Railway must be made accountable

It is frustrating to see yet another report highlighting the Bangladesh Railway's chronic failure to implement projects on time and within budget. Reportedly, 12 out of 13 projects completed by BR in fiscal year 2018-19 had their time extended, ranging up to nine and a half years, and costs increased as much as 260.81 percent. The details of these poorly executed projects seem irrelevant given how frequently this has been happening, thanks to a lack of transparency and accountability at the railway departments. No amount of criticism seems to have an effect on the relevant authorities. This is alarming.

Let us take the Dhaka-Tongi-Joydepur railway expansion project as an example. This was supposed to be completed in 2015, but physical work did not even begin until February 2019. The project's deadline is now set for June 2027, marking an unbelievable 12-year delay. Meanwhile, its cost has increased almost fourfold to Tk 3,342.55 crore. Reportedly, the project was initiated without any feasibility study or clearly defined work scope.

Another report found that in FY 2018-19, the East Zone of BR recorded a loss of more than Tk 11 crore while making purchases. There are allegations that it procured Tk 2 crore worth of materials from a vendor when the market price of those materials was just around Tk 18 lakh. We have also seen how BR's failure to buy 70 locomotives over 11 years has increased their cost by almost a thousand crore taka. This culture of poor execution causing inflated bills seems to be the overarching story of BR's development projects, which invariably suffer from delays in material supply, changes in project designs and work scopes, lack of proper feasibility study, shortage of manpower, procurement anomalies, budget extensions, etc.

Against this backdrop, between 2008-09 and 2022-23, the BR spent Tk 71,113 crore under the annual development programme (ADP). With this much money injected, how much return has it been able to provide so far? Very little. It continues to provide substandard services to passengers with outdated locomotives and frequent delays in trips. How long will this organisation, and those in charge of it, remain unaccountable? How long will the hard-earned money of taxpayers be spent in enabling corruption? We urge the authorities to institute a functional system of accountability at BR so that all projects are executed properly.