The government failed to launch survey for hi-tech parks in six divisional cities and one district town due to unavailability of land as the scheduled time for survey ended on June 30, said official sources.
Ministry of Post, Telecommunication and Information Technology now urged the finance ministry to extend the time to December.
The ministry sent a letter last week to the finance ministry seeking six months extension of survey time. Deputy Secretary Md Akter Hossain signed the letter
The ministry, which signed a contract with a private firm for conducting survey, has sought Tk69 lakh last fiscal allocation for survey to be carried forward to the current fiscal year.
Land is unavailable in Khulna, Rangpur and Chittagong cities for the projects while a senior official said they received confirmation of land for Rajshahi, Sylhet and Barisal cities.
“We have received confirmation to get the land for construction of hi-tech parks in three divisional cities -Rajshahi, Sylhet and Barisal,” said Nazrul Islam Khan, Secretary to the ICT Division, told the Dhaka Tribune.
He said the textile mills authorities in Rangpur and Khulna assured that they would provide land for hi-tech projects in the cities.
Meanwhile, ministers from Chittagong also said they would manage land for construction of hi-tech park in Chittagong, according to official sources.
Earlier, Prime Minister’s telecommunication and ICT Adviser Sajeeb Wazed Joy announced to increase the area of the country’s first hi-tech park at Kaliakoir, Gazipur by another 40.47 hectares (100 acres). The area of the park, which was started about 15 years ago in 1999 and is still to be completed, will now stand at 332 acres.
During a visit to the project site, Joy expressed dissatisfaction at the slow progress but said the park would be completed within the term of the present government.
The tech park has progressed very little in the past 15 years since the project was conceived, and officials concerned blame frequent shifts in government’s decision and the World Bank’s intervention for this.
In 1999, the then prime minister Sheikh Hasina decided to establish the park on 232 acres of land of the Kaliakoir Surface Satellite Station. But the following four-party alliance government did not carry on with the project. The then science, information and communications technology ministry initiated a new project at Kaliakoir in 2004, but it did nothing more than acquiring land.
Project officials concerned alleged that the World Bank, which is financing Tk200 crore in the project, had often caused problems by interrupting decisions.
In 2012, it decided to implement the project through public-private partnership and the Kuala Lumpur-based Kulim Technology Park Corporation became the top bidder in an international tender.