Govt toughens stance on land acquisition project

The interim government has toughened its stand on a land acquisition project of the Roads and Highways Division (RHD) because of its bloated cost estimations, faulty design and long delays, officials said on Thursday.

Even after extending the project, the execution time for three more years up to June 2023 from its original implementation period of three years between July 2018 and June 2020, the RHD has failed to make any headway in land acquisition, they said.

Last month the government's highest economic policymaking body -- Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC) -- sent back the revision proposal on the land acquisition project aimed at widening the Faridpur-Bhanga-Barishal-Patuakhali-Kuakata road.

The project, undertaken by deposed Premier Sheikh Hasina's government, is likely to be scrapped or could be delayed due to its faulty feasibility study and huge cost involvement, government officials said.

The ECNEC has not given any more specific instruction to the ministry of road transport and bridges (MoRT&B) on the project which has been going on since 2018, they said.

The RHD recently increased the land acquisition project cost by 224 per cent to Tk 60.50 billion from its Tk 18.67 billion estimation and sought two more years up to June 2025 for completion.

The entire project cost will be borne by the government from its internal resources.

Interestingly, the RHD failed to acquire and develop land for the highway widening work in five years and submitted a revision proposal seeking two more years for completion, an MoRT&B official said.

According to the RHD report, it had spent Tk 8.01 billion, only 7.54 per cent of the total project cost, till March last year.

The government already extended the project implementation deadline on two occasions.

The deadline for the first time was extended by two years up to June 2022 from the original timeline of June 2020.

When the RHD failed to start land acquisition, the government again extended the deadline up to June 2023.

The RHD still failed and sought revision of both project cost and time, officials said.

A senior PC official said the design of the road alignment and land sizes were so faulty that the revised project required a big change.

In addition, the bloated cost estimation compared to its original one also made the fate of the project uncertain, he added.

As per the original Tk 18.67 billion project, the RHD decided to acquire 302.70 acres of land for widening the road. But, it has now proposed to acquire 860.662 acres of land.

Since the RHD has revised the road alignment inside Barishal town and decided to bypass the city, the project cost has escalated, said an RHD official.

"In order to avoid unusual delays in main road constructing, the government earlier recommended that the RHD take up a separate project for land acquisition. But, the RHD was neither able to acquire and develop the land in five years nor went for main road construction work," said the PC official.

He said there was a faulty feasibility study done under the technical assistance for sub-regional road transport project preparatory facility (SRPPF)-II, funded by the Asian Development Bank.

"The study under the project gave us a land acquisition plan and design and we had considered that for preparing the project. But when we had gone for executing the project, we faced a lot of difficulties," said a senior RHD official.

"Actually, when we were gathering field experience before implementing the land acquisition work, we saw a different picture than the feasibility study," he said requesting for anonymity.

He also said they had recently been forced to revise the project due to change of the alignment for the proposed Faridpur-Bhanga-Barisal-Patuakhali road and sent it for revision to the Planning Commission (PC).

When asked, a PC official said they had recently reviewed the revised proposal of the RHD strictly for the ongoing land acquisition project and placed it before the ECNEC on September 18.

Then the ECNEC sent it back and the commission had not got any more specific instruction on it, he added.

The RHD undertook the land acquisition project in its preparation for widening the road into six lanes.

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