The Bangladesh Railway (BR) has been treated in a step-motherly way since the independence of the country. Nearly 85 per cent of the public development budget in the transportation sector has been spent on developing the road networks. This fund denial for development plus the fact that little reforms were carried out in BR have turned the railways into a sick entity. But the BR, with its in-built advantages, should have been the favourite mode of transportation for different stakeholders.
The expansion of railway networks involves less land acquisition than for building roads. This is a big plus point in a land-scarce country. Railways are also safer than roads; nearly 2% of the gross domestic product (GDP) are lost annually from road accidents. Railways also generate significantly less pollution than roads and are, thus, environment friendly. Specially, as the bulk carrier of goods, commercially, railways provide the cheapest mode of haulage of goods for business operators. But transportation of containers by rail from Dhaka to Chittagong, for instance, is found to be substantially lower than such transportation by lorries through roads. This is because of the present poor state of the railways.
Considering all of these factors, the development of the railways should be a top priority for the government. Apart from channeling greater public funds for BR's development, the government should take prompt actions to utilise external assistance which are on offer from different donors bodies for the same purpose. Simultaneously, the BR should be turned into a corporate body with the government not giving up control over it but making its relation more flexible with the government by leaving its day-to-day operations to autonomous but accountable officials for taking decisions and running the new corporate entity on commercial lines.
Humayun Kabir
Mohammadpur, Dhaka
Development of Bangladesh Railway
FE Team | Published: December 10, 2009 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00
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