Kumargaon-Sylhet Airport road to be made four-lane

The government is planning to upgrade the 12.78km Kumargaon-Badaghat-Airport highway to four lanes to ease traffic jam and commuting in Sylhet city.

The Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC) is likely to approve the project, along with nine others, today (Tuesday) at its meeting with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in the chair, a senior official of the Planning Commission told The Business Post.

The project cost is estimated at Tk 727.63 crore, which will come from the government exchequer. The Roads and Highways Department will implement the project. Its tenure is from December 2021 to June 2024.

Planning Commission Member Mamun Al Rashid said traffic congestion would reduce and road connectivity would be established between Sunamganj, Moulvibazar, Habiganj, and Osmani International Airport once the project was implemented.

Besides, traffic jam in the city would be reduced by constructing alternative roads for trucks and other heavy vehicles plying from Bholaganj to Sylhet.

The width of the highway is 5.5 metres. The Sylhet Road has started at a distance of 800 metres from the end of the highway, which provides the main roadway communication with the big stone quarries of the country.

Meanwhile, after rehabilitating nearly two lakh homeless people, the government is now going to provide accommodations for another about 4.87 lakh landless and homeless families under the Ashrayan-2 project.

The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) has sent a revised proposal titled “Ashrayan-2 (4th Revision)” to the Planning Commission for approval, which will be placed at today’s ECNEC meeting.

The project’s estimated cost increased to Tk 11,142 crore after revision from Tk 4,826 crore, which was the cost after the third revision. It will be implemented by the PMO within June 2023. The fund will come from the government exchequer.

Under the project, the government will build 14,620 new barracks. Of them, 5,149 brick houses and 5,078 semi-brick ones will be constructed in char areas while 4,393 semi-brick structures will be erected in other parts of the country.

The project’s main components are constructing 1,120 community centres, internal roads in all vicinities, and 580 specially designed houses; installing shallow and deep tube wells; and building 565 ghats, internal roads, box culverts, paved drains, and slope

protection.

The PMO first undertook the massive Ashrayan-2 project in 2010 to rehabilitate 2.5 lakh people across the country. The first two phases were successfully completed that year. The first Ashrayan project was launched in 1997, and 2.97 lakh families were provided with shelters in three phases.

Ashrayan is one of the 10 priority projects of the prime minister. It was designed to provide the distressed population with homes and other support to help them become self-reliant.

The project’s main objectives include making the homeless and landless people capable of running their own income-generating initiatives, getting interest-free loans, and receiving training in various trades.