Bangladesh Railway on Wednesday approved a proposal for increasing cost and extending the deadline of a project to turn the Dhaka-Narayanganj railway route into a dual-track and dual-gauge route while the project is being implemented at a slow pace.

The proposal sought to hike the project cost by around 107 per cent with a third-time extension of the project deadline for converting the existing track into a dual-gauge route, acquisition of more land and building additional infrastructures.

The original deadline to finish the project was June 2018 which the new proposal set for June 2023.   

At a meeting on Wednesday, held at Rail Bhaban and chaired by the railway director general, the project officials were instructed to review the proposed cost hike to find ways to reduce it before sending it to the railways ministry for its nod, the project director Md Afzal Hossain told New Age on the same day.

The proposal would be sent to the planning ministry for a final decision, he added.

Under the existing project, a new track on the route is yet to be set up while the project officials claimed that ‘the track would become visible in December’.

Earlier in 2015, the ECNEC approved the Construction of a dual-gauge line which would run parallel to the existing meter-gauge line on Dhaka-Narayanganj route and the project was to be completed at a cost of Tk 378.73 crore out of which the GoB fund was Tk 129.18 crore and the Japanese Debt Relief Grant Assistance-Counterpart Fund was Tk 249.54 crore.

Afzal Hossain said that the project was started in October 2015 while the contractors started physical works in February 2018.

Initially the project was scheduled to be completed by June 2018, a deadline which was extended till June 2019 for the first time due to a delay in land handover and for the second time extended till June 2021 due to the coronavirus outbreak, he said, adding that the deadline was extended twice without increasing the project cost.

According to the last project evaluation committee meeting, held in February this year, the project cost was proposed to increase by 106.58 per cent which stood at Tk 782.41 crore and the deadline was to be extended till June 2023.

Officials said that the existing meter-gauge track on the route weighed 34.03 kilograms while the new dual-gauge track would weigh 60 kilograms.

The rail level of the new line would be around 35.2 centimetres higher from that of the existing line for carrying the extra weight which would create problems at level crossings where the two lines cross over, they said.

So the proposal was given to convert the existing line to dual gauge which increased the overall project cost.

The project cost also increased due to the acquisition of 0.51 acres of land and the construction of some additional infrastructures like buildings, platforms and platform sheds, footbridges and gang huts.

After Wednesday’s meeting, BR director general Md Shamsuzzaman told New Age that they had given approval to the proposal.