Co-financing body on Padma Bridge meets Feb 1-3

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Munima Sultana
Experts of the Padma bridge project are yet to approve the most vital river training design with only a week's time left to start negotiation on funding with the development partners.
A co-financing monitoring committee comprising all development partners and the government sits on February 1-3 to set the areas of donor financing in the project, whose cost escalated to US$ 2.4 billion from $ 1.8 billion.
Although officials of the Bangladesh Bridge Authority (BBA) said that the panel of experts (POE) had given its approval to the first option proposed by the Padma bridge consultants on river training work (RTW), the POE denied the claim.
The BBA engineers said the POE has more queries relating to the first option of RTW that sought construction of revetment on one side of the river bank and asked the consultants to consider other option to check river erosion.
Canadian-based NHC that works in consortium with the lead firm Maunsell AECOM has designed the RTW, which is essential to decide on the construction time, length of the bridge and cost of the project.
It proposed three options to check the river erosion for ensuring water flow under the bridge upto 100 years, of which first option recommends to construct 11km revetment along the Jajira side of the river bank with 4km hard points at Mawa.
The second option calls for constructing guide with two hard points at Jajira and four km revetment. The third option is guide embankment with groin, which has been rejected by both consultants and experts.
The interim RTW was submitted to the BBA on October 19 and final one on November 26. POE has been reviewing the design since then and placing recommendations time to time for building the road-cum-rail bridge.
Jamilur Reza Chowdhury, chairman of POE, however, refused to comment on the difference of opinion on the river training design saying the POE members have several queries on engineering side and resettlement and land acquisition issues.
He said the POE will sit with the consultants on Saturday to hammer out a decision on the design.
A local expert on river training said the government might favour the first option as it will facilitate the process of construction of the bridge slated for October this year.
"At least two years' time is needed to finalise the methodology of the RTW as the consultants need to fix it up through trial and error," he claimed.
He said the Padma, which is one of three largest rivers in the world, cannot be comparable to other rivers and its RTW must focus various engineering sides for ensuring social and economical environment.
According to the interim design, the Padma multipurpose bridge will be 6.15 km in length and 21.10 metre in width with a four-lane road on the top and a broad-gauge rail lane below. It will have 150 spans with four-km approach road at Mawa and 12km other side.