Though five years have already elapsed, the authorities are yet to start the land acquisition process for a Tk 1,202 crore railway line construction project to connect Magura district with rail network, making way for further cost and time overruns.
The deadline has been extended until June 2024 for laying broad-gauge rail tracks on a 19-km stretch between Faridpur’s Madhukhali and Magura and a 4.90-kilometre loop line. After getting the approval for the project in 2018, the original deadline was fixed at April, 2022.
However, no feasibility study was done before approving the project and after finishing the study and preparing a detailed design, the authorities finally started the physical work in June last year.
But now new problem has arisen as the contractors have demanded adjustment to the prices of construction materials, citing the pandemic and price hike in the global market.
Bangladesh Railway has forwarded the China-Bangladesh joint venture company’s demand for price adjustment to Central Procurement Technical Unit (CPTU), seeking its opinions in this regard.
On the other hand, the land acquisition work on the project did not see any progress. Though the authorities needed to acquire less land under the project comparing to other railway projects, Bangladesh Railways has old embankments in most of the areas. In Magura district, they needed to acquire only 112 acres of land.
For this project, the government allocated and disbursed funds quickly but the overall progress was not satisfactory.
Implementation, Monitoring and Evaluation Division (IMED) in its in-depth project monitoring report says that so far around 40 per cent progress has been made and there is a little chance that the project will meet the 2024 deadline. Moreover, time and cost might be extended further for the project.
The project is being implemented under two contract packages and major works including construction of a 19-km main line from Modhukhali to Kamarkhali to Magura town, a 4.90-km loop line at Kamarkhali and Magura station yard, to station buildings at Kamarkhali and Magura, and one underpass.
Besides, two major railway bridges will be built under the project—Chandana Bridge and Garai Bridge and a 1,680-metre viaduct. It also includes 27 small bridges, culverts and railway signalling, electrical works.
Delay in land acquisition
Under the project, Tk 195 crore was allotted for the purpose. The acquisition of 18.609 acres of land was approved in Faridpur district while 112 acres of land in Magura district.
The authorities sent the proposal for land acquisition to Magura and Faridpur DC offices in March 2021. The government also paid them Tk 155 crore and Tk 40 crore respectively.
But later the authorities found that the allocation estimation ratio was wrong.
At a project steering committee (PSC) meeting held in June this year at the Ministry of Railways, the authorities decided to hand over Tk 40.22 crore to Faridpur district administration.
They found that Magura will need Tk 114 crore and Faridpur Tk 80 crore.
Price adjustment complications
The construction work is going on under two packages--one is track installation and another is bridge construction.
In the latest PSC meeting, chaired by railway secretary Md. Humayun Kabir, it was decided that they may consider the contractors’ claim of price adjustments.
To justify their claims, the contractors earlier said that currently, prices of all construction materials and fuel have increased in the world market which accelerated their cost of goods transportation. They called for applying a "force majeure" clause.
The clause means a contract provision that relieves the parties from performing their contractual obligations when certain circumstances beyond their control arise, making performance inadvisable, commercially impracticable, illegal, or impossible.
Additionally, for the bridge package, contractor CRCC-MAHL JV demanded the authorities change structural specification, customisation of rail bridge girder and fabrication process.
A committee was formed to resolve the issue and the committee came up with a set of recommendations. They said that as the prescribed steel in the DPP is not available in the market, opinion from an experienced design consultant can be taken to find alternative materials.
For price adjustment, the authorities may follow price adjustment rule and pay additional money or may adjust prices of materials by accessing current market prices.
The authorities then decided to take BUET experts’ opinions to choose steel for the bridges’ girders and to take CPTU’s opinions for price adjustment.
However, IMED in their report said that China Railway Group Ltd – Castle Construction Co Ltd. (CREC-CCCL Joint Venture) is yet to start rail track installation work under WD-1 package (track installation) as they failed to collect materials like PSC sleepers, ballast and rail.
For WD-2 package (bridge construction), the contractor CRCC-MAHL Joint Venture could not collect webgerder and H-Beam.
Besides, the length of Chandana Bridge will need to be increased which created both time and cost overruns, the report said.
The IMED observed that both the Ministry of Railways and Bangladesh Railway had serious lacking in monitoring the project since the beginning. They should have been more serious about this big budget project.
