Construction work of road infrastructures in the country suffers due to unavailability of stones, following closure of borders with India amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Contractors of the Roads and Highways Department (RHD) have been facing an acute crisis of stone, an important material used in different layers during the road construction, as trucks are hardly allowed to cross the borders.
To avert coronavirus spread from the neighbouring country of India where the situation is considered to be worse, the Bangladesh government has kept all the land ports bordering India almost closed.
Import of stones through three borders in the northern and western parts of the country has remained suspended since the coronavirus pandemic hit, said sources.
The stone import through the Burimari border is available - only occasionally, the sources added.
Road development work is highly dependent on imported stones from India, but the construction work has been hit hard in the last few months due to the stone crisis, said a contractor, preferring not to be named.
The contractor occasionally obtains stones as Indian trucks unload them in no-man's-land - only to be carried by Bangladesh trucks all the way to this side of the fence through Burimari border.
Though there is no actual data on the total demand of stones in the country's road infrastructures, contractors said the amount would not be less than 20,000 cubic feet (cft) a day.
The road contractors get approximately 1,000 cft after an interval of a week or more, they said.
A contractor working in the highway development work said he needed 10 million cft of stones for constructing a 25-km highway.
At present, the RHD has been constructing different projects, including SASEC-1 and 2, under which more than 265-km highways are being widened.
The 70-km road under SASEC-1 is almost complete. But the remaining 195-km road under SASEC-2 has just begun - this project requires a large quantity of stones.
Officials said some contractors of different big projects had already informed RHD of the stone crisis, stating the reasons for closure of Banglabandh, Hili, Bhomra, and Tamabil borders.
The demand for stones is lower in the smaller projects and contractors can even manage those from local sources; but bigger projects need a vast quantity of stones, said RHD sources.
Although there is a huge demand for stones for construction of mega projects like Padma Bridge, metro rail and Dhaka elevated expressway, the projects manage the important construction material by importing through the sea.
Talking with officials of the projects, the FE found that these projects had been importing stones from Thailand, Oman, Egypt and Indonesia.
Moreover, the officials said, the quality of Indian stones does not match with the requirement of the mega projects, prompting them to import the important ingredient through the sea from other nations.
In addition, the stone variety from Rajasthan of India meets the requirements of the mega projects, but it takes time and money to transport it all the way to Bangladesh, the officials added.
Bangladesh has some sources of stones - the greater Sylhet area is one of them.
But stones obtained from there are not of quality as per the need of the projects; on the other hand, the supply of the stones is not
adequate too.
smunima@yahoo.com