Bangladesh Railway (BR) has decided to blacklist a Chinese contractor company namely Power Construction Corporation of China (PCCC), as they left civil work of Dhaka-Narayanganj Double Lining project midway on the ground of non-payment and delay in handover of parts of site.
The decision came as the Railways Ministry’s attempts of negotiating with the contractor to get them back to the work failed after PCCC served a unilateral contract cancellation notice.
Speaking to The Business Post, Project Director Selim Rouf said, “The process of blacklisting the company is underway. They will not be able to compete in any tender of railways in the future. Besides, the contract for this project with them will be terminated officially.”
In March this year, Railways Minister Nurul Islam Sujan had asked PowerChina, the mother company of PCCC, to complete this project before approaching the ministry for any new BR project. But no positive response came from them when the ministry continued the negotiation process.
Railways authority has paid bills of Tk 159.35 crore so far to PCCC and has an outstanding amount of Tk 17.40 crore. BR will scrutinize if the contractor should get the rest of the payment as they breach contract rules.
The BR has estimated that they will now need to spend Tk 152 crore to finish PCCC’s unfinished works. The PCCC was working to lay 12 kilometers dual gauge track and 5.1 kilometers loop line on Dhaka-Narayanganj section next to the current meter gauge line under a work package.
Now, Bangladesh Railway will revise the project and merge two work packages. It will float a fresh tender to hire a new contractor once the Planning Commission gives approval. The contractor will complete the gauge track and turn the meter gauge into a dual gauge as well, officials said.
Though, the work scope of the project has been changed once eight years into the initiation of the project in 2015 and the deadline got extended to June 2026 from June 2017 along with cost acceleration Tk 658.34 crore from Tk 378.65 crore, the project authorities claimed that merging two works packages would not hamper timely implementation and cause no further cost acceleration.
However, they are yet to float tender for two work packages and two consultancy packages of the project. The work progress of the total project till July this year was only 47 per cent and financial progress was 35.84 per cent.
Complexities since the beginning
The BR took up the project in January 2015 to lay a new Dual Gauge (DG) line on this route to double the existing capacity as the present Metre Gauge (MG) line is not capable of meeting the growing demand of passengers. Later, they revised the project in April, 2023 to turn the MG line into a dual gauge one as well.
The whole project is being implemented under four packages. Working package one and two are for constructing parallel new DG line and signaling system developing, package three and four for converting the existing MG line to DG and converting Bi-directional Signaling System to Unidirectional Signaling System.
The PCCC was awarded the new line laying (package one) work in June, 2017 at Tk 263.64 crore and they served the notice of contract termination in March this year, according to BR documents.
The PCCC alleged that the authority delayed handing over the project site and their dues were not paid on time. Besides, they did not get a bill for extra works.
On the other hand, BR officials said that they delayed handing over part of the project site to the contractor as there were many illegal structures which they needed to oust. Besides, the land grabbers filed 13 writ petitions with the High Court seeking injunction on removal. Those petitions took time to be disposed.
The BR has already signed a MoU with Narayanganj City Corporation to get the required land at Chasara-Narayanganj section for the double line project. The remaining aspects of the project will proceed without complications, they said.
Fresh tender to merge two packages
At an Implementation Committee (PIC) meeting on the project held this month, BR Director General (DG) Md. Quamrul Ahsan said the unfinished work of package one would cost Tk 152 crore while the package three [turning MG line to dual gauge] would cost Tk 161.47 crore. “If we merge these two packages and complete under a fresh tender it would cost Tk 313.47 crore,” he said.
The meeting decided to seek Project Steering Committee (PSC) and Planning Commission’s approval to float the tender.
The PSC meeting chaired by the Ministry of Railways secretary Md. Humayun Kabir approved the move and decided to inform the Planning Commission if the cost they have primarily estimated for merging two contract packages exceeds Revised Development Project Proposal (RDPP) approved expenditure limit, shows a BR document.
