Better late than never
Saturday, 5 April 2008
Ripan Kumar Biswas
It is better to do something late than not doing it at all. It will be a positive development to reform the Bangladesh Railway (BR). It is long overdue.
The communications secretary recently told reporters that the government was considering a donor-funded move to make the state-run BR a public limited company.
The service of the BR cannot be revived without turning it into a business organisation, and that it was likely to be made a limited company, he said.
The government signed in February last year credit agreements with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the World Bank (WB) to support its plans to transform the Bangladesh Railway into a well-managed, customer-focused organisation.
The failure to expand, improve, and modernise the railway has deprived the government of a large revenue and the public of proper service.
The railways, built between Kolkata (India) and Khulna (Bangladesh) by the colonial British administration in 1884, suffered, after the end of the British colonial period in 1947, due to gross neglect and mismanagement.
Although the BR remains a principal transportation system of the country providing the and cheapest mode of transport, it gets less of passengers because the alternative surface transport system in the country is alluring them. The BR has 2,855 kilometres of tracks and employs 34,168 employees. Bangladesh has more than 20,000 kilometres of paved highway.
Before independence, around 70 per cent of the travellers and 43 per cent of goods were handled by the railway, but now only 8.0 per cent of the travellers uses the service. During the last fiscal, the railway's annual income was Taka 4,660m, while its expenditure was Taka 9,750m.
The BR, among the public sector organisations, has the largest budget. No other organisation own, so much property or infrastructure. Railway employees, its trade unions leaders and other influential elements grab railway property from time to time.
Former communication minister Nazmul Huda bent the rules to lease out 4.16 acres of the railway land in the capital without any tenders for the construction of a five-star hotel.
To transform the BR into a well-managed, customer-focused service, its manpower should trained according to strict professional criteria. It should utilise its resources properly.
The writer is based in New York
It is better to do something late than not doing it at all. It will be a positive development to reform the Bangladesh Railway (BR). It is long overdue.
The communications secretary recently told reporters that the government was considering a donor-funded move to make the state-run BR a public limited company.
The service of the BR cannot be revived without turning it into a business organisation, and that it was likely to be made a limited company, he said.
The government signed in February last year credit agreements with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the World Bank (WB) to support its plans to transform the Bangladesh Railway into a well-managed, customer-focused organisation.
The failure to expand, improve, and modernise the railway has deprived the government of a large revenue and the public of proper service.
The railways, built between Kolkata (India) and Khulna (Bangladesh) by the colonial British administration in 1884, suffered, after the end of the British colonial period in 1947, due to gross neglect and mismanagement.
Although the BR remains a principal transportation system of the country providing the and cheapest mode of transport, it gets less of passengers because the alternative surface transport system in the country is alluring them. The BR has 2,855 kilometres of tracks and employs 34,168 employees. Bangladesh has more than 20,000 kilometres of paved highway.
Before independence, around 70 per cent of the travellers and 43 per cent of goods were handled by the railway, but now only 8.0 per cent of the travellers uses the service. During the last fiscal, the railway's annual income was Taka 4,660m, while its expenditure was Taka 9,750m.
The BR, among the public sector organisations, has the largest budget. No other organisation own, so much property or infrastructure. Railway employees, its trade unions leaders and other influential elements grab railway property from time to time.
Former communication minister Nazmul Huda bent the rules to lease out 4.16 acres of the railway land in the capital without any tenders for the construction of a five-star hotel.
To transform the BR into a well-managed, customer-focused service, its manpower should trained according to strict professional criteria. It should utilise its resources properly.
The writer is based in New York