After years of anticipation, the first ever elevated metro rail in the country is ready for operations between the Uttara and Agargaon sections.
This is certainly a red letter day.
The Metro Rail project which has been gestating since the second half of 2016, has been a long-anticipated solution to the debilitating traffic problems of Dhaka city. With the inauguration of the project finally at our doorsteps, it seems that we can finally breathe a sigh of relief.
However, the time it took to complete just a portion of this project raises some caveats. With an initial completion date of 2019 after several setbacks in the planning phase alone, we have witnessed a delay of three years that pushed back the completion date to December of 2022 -- a completion date just for the first phase alone.
The initial budget of around Tk22 crores saw an increase of almost 50% to Tkk33cr as of today. While delays and budgetary expansions are par for the course for massive projects like this, this is symptomatic of bigger issues that lie with projects of such massive scale.
The increase in budget and deadline issues need to be properly investigated through external audits and the findings need to be shared with necessary officials. Amendments have to be made to streamline the production pipeline, and above all else, all the lessons learned from this project need to be implemented on all future developments.
Again, kudos to the authorities for pulling off such a massive project. However, only if we implement the lessons learned not only to infrastructural development, but to all aspects of governance do we have the chance to make good on this momentum. Here's to the future.
