The long-awaited Dhaka-Chittagong four-lane highway construction is going to miss its deadline again as only 69 per cent of its work was completed until last month, officials said Friday.
The Roads and Highways Department (RHD) is likely to apply for extending the project execution deadline with bloated cost for one more year until December 2016, project insiders said.
The current deadline for the Tk 31.90 billion 'Upgrdatioin of Dhaka-Chittagong 4-lane road project' is December, 2015.
RHD officials said some contractors have missed the deadline to complete their earmarked works despite repeated directives to complete the work following their action plans.
"Only 69 per cent of the physical works was completed until July this year. Now it is difficult to complete the remaining work within next five months of the project timeline," a senior RHD official said.
The government in 2006 approved the project at Tk 21.68 billion for completing the construction work by June 2012. Later, the project was revised for the first time increasing the cost to Tk 23.82 billion in 2009 due to correction of the profile of the project and changes in the cross-sectional design.
After that, a special revision of the project was made in December 2012 further raising the cost by Tk 280 million to Tk 24.10 billion due to increase of cost in land acquisition.
In March 2013, the ECNEC revised the same project for the third time hiking the cost to Tk 31.90 billion to complete it by December, 2015.
According to the project insiders, the RHD has so far completed construction of 143-kilometre bituminous road out of total 192-kilometre length highways from Daudkandi to port city of Chittagong.
The RHD divided the highways into 10 packages for appointing the contractor. It appointed six local and foreign construction firms to complete the work within the deadline.
A senior official of the Ministry of Road Transport and Bridge (MRT&B) said they are in trouble dealing with a Chinese construction firm Sinohydro whose performance has been the worst.
"The main obstacle to completing the project work within the deadline has been the Chinese company. Despite repeated requests, the company is still slow in its work. Even they are not maintaining their action plan they submitted to us earlier," he told the FE requesting anonymity.
The MRT&B official said the local firms-Reza Construction and Taher-Alamin JV-- are performing better than the Chinese company.
The average physical progress in the packages of the local companies is more than 80 per cent. However, the Sinohydro has completed only 60 per cent on an average for its seven packages until July this year.
According to the RHD report, the construction work for the bridges on the Dhaka-Chittagong four-lane project is also unsatisfactory.
An RHD official said under the three packages for the bridge construction, the contractor for the B-1 and B-2 package has not been performing up to the mark. This also delayed the overall progress of the 4-lane road construction.
According to the RHD, they had appointed contractors in February 2012 to build six bridges and three flyovers on the highway. The bridges and flyovers were scheduled to be completed in two consecutive years.
Project director of the Dhaka-Chittagong 4-lane project Ibne Alam Hassan at a meeting held recently at the RHD informed that he had already asked the contractors to complete their work as per their action plans.
"We are hopeful that the project works will be finished by mid-2016", he said.
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Dhaka-Ctg four-lane highway set to miss deadline again
FHM Humayan Kabir | Published: August 15, 2015 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2026 06:01:00
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