We have already burned our hands in a failed railway project. No need to repeat the same mistake again.
Money wasted in ‘poor’ railway project
Kamran Reza Chowdhury
- Published at 04:28 am May 27th, 2013
Poor upgrades of two vital rail routes, agreed to by the premiers of Bangladesh and India, might fail to help the free flow of goods between three South Asian countries.
The Bangladesh Railway has decided to use 90-pound rail (one metre of rail weighing 90 pounds) on the two routes, which is not fit to carry heavier Indian wagons with 22.9-tonne axle load, experts say.
Railway engineers fear that the rehabilitated routes with 90-pound rail can give in any time if the heavier Indian wagons frequently move on the Rajshahi-Rohanpur-Singhabad route and the Parbotipur-Birol-Radhikapur track in Dinajpur district.
In a letter to the railway headquarters,
the railway’s general manager has suggested that the Indian wagons should carry 18-tonne axle load—4.9 tonnes below the Indian wagon capacity—for the safety of the tracks. Dhaka Tribune has obtained a letter in this regard.
Md Amzad Hossain, the additional director general (infrastructure), admitted the problem. “We will set condition for lower loads and put speed restriction on the Indian wagons,” Amzad told Dhaka Tribune.
He said making the track uniform with the Indian railway that uses 120-pound rail track involves a “huge cost”. Ideally, we should use 100-pound rail in the routes having the prospect of international trade,” TA Chowdhury, an ex-director general of railway, told the Dhaka Tribune