Bangladesh has decided to form Dhaka Mass Transport Company (DMTC) to run metro rail operation in the capital Dhaka, DTCB officials said yesterday.
The Dhaka Transport Coordination Board (DTCB), the sole authority to plan the project and arrange funds, has already prepared a draft of the organisational structure of DMTC.
S M Saleh Uddin, executive director of DTCB, said that the DMTC would be an independent company.
“Organisationally, it will be under the rail ministry but it will have an independent commercial authority,” he said.
Uddin also said that the government also recently approved a special project organisation (SPO) to carry out negotiations and initial implementation of the project.
Japan International Co-operation Agency (JICA) in December last year asked the government to approve the new route alignment through Khamarbari, form a SPO and DMTC, and make tangible progress in land acquisition for relocation of depot.
Four fact-finding teams of JICA raised these issues time and again as prerequisites for funding the $2.7bn project in the current fiscal year (2011-2012) of Japan.
He said Bangladesh is expected to get the Japanese soft loan for the project by next month as the government has recently approved realignment of the proposed metro rail route through Khamarbari instead of Bijay Sarani.
Uddin, however, said that the approval was given without seeing a detailed design to check whether it is really practical to build the route along Sangsad Avenue through Khamarbari.
He said that a Japanese team of experts recently came on an ‘appraisal mission’ for checking the details of the project. “Another team will come on March 5 to carry out another of such mission,” he added.
A top JICA official said that the agency had asked Bangladesh to resolve the project’s outstanding issues so that it could release fund for the $2.7bn venture in the current fiscal year.
