Chinese firm China Communication Construction Company Limited (CCCCL will be appointed as service provider for the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Tunnel under Karnaphuli River in Chattagram. Cabinet Committee on Government Purchase (CCGP) at a meeting approved a proposal in this regard on Wednesday. The same company has been engaged by the government to build the tunnel and its associated infrastructure. As per the proposal, the Chinese company will collect the toll from the tunnel user vehicles and also conduct its operation and maintenance work at a cost of Tk 983.82 crore for a five-year tenure. However, the toll structure for the vehicles has yet not been determined by the government. The under-construction Tunnel is the first underwater expressway in the country, expected to be open to traffic by the end of 2022. According to officials of the project, 86 per cent of the tunnel construction, including the construction of the main tunnel and the approach roads in Chattogram, has been completed. Read:Construction companies claim "breakthrough" in Bangabandhu Tunnel work The main tunnel is 3.32 kilometres long. It has two tubes, each 2.45 km long, and has a diameter of 10.80 metres. Each tube will consist of two lanes. The tubes are 12 metres apart from each other. There will be a 5.35 km connecting road on the west and east ends of the main tunnel, along with a 727-metre long bridge. The tunnel goes under the Karnaphuli at the Patenga Naval Academy point in the port city to a depth of 18m to 31m to Anwara Upazila on the other side of the river. Officials believe there will be better connectivity between the tourist city Cox’s Bazar, southern Chattogram and the rest of the country once the tunnel is open. It will also decrease the number of vehicles using the two bridges over the river. South of the river in Anwara lies the Korean and Chinese export processing zones, the CUFL factory and Parki Beach. All routes to Cox's Bazar, Banshkhali and Matarbari power station and deep seaport go through Anwara. Work on the project began in December 2017. But the pace of work was a bit slow during the coronavirus pandemic. Official said the construction of the two tubes of the tunnel under the river has already been completed. The first tube took 17 months to complete, but the second one was completed in 10 months. Structural work on the tunnel is currently ongoing. Jointly funded by Bangladesh and China, the initial cost of the project was estimated at Tk 9880 crore. The cost was subsequently revised up to Tk 10,374 crore. END/UNB/

Hundreds of passengers, including children and women, were caught in a long queue of vehicles on the Dhaka-Mawa-Bhanga expressway on the first day of toll collection due to shortage of toll booths. The authority started collecting tolls from vehicles on the Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman since Friday (1 July) midnight. Read: South Korean firm to collect toll from Dhaka-Mawa Expressway for 5 years During the morning hours many vehicles were seen passing very slowly through the Bogail toll plaza. Only four booths opened to collect tolls at the Bogail toll plaza instead of ten booths, said Faruk Hossain, who is in-charge of toll plaza. As a result, vehicles are taking more time to cross the toll plaza, causing traffic jam, he added.

Korea Expressway Corporation (KEC), a South Korean firm, has received the government’s nod to install and operate  the toll collection system for three bridges on the Dhaka-Mawa-Bhanga expressway. “We’ve given our “in principle” approval to the proposal of the Road Transportation and Highway Division to appoint the KEC for installation and operation of the Intelligent Transport System (ITS) on the Dhaka-Mawa-Bhanga expressway”, Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal told reporters after the cabinet body meeting. Kamal presided over the high-powered committee meeting on Thursday. Also read: Dhaka-Mawa-Bhanga Expressway to open up new era of road connectivity Briefing on the outcomes of the meeting Additional secretary of the Cabinet Division Md Shamsul Arefin informed that the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) has been funding the project to install the ITS on the Dhaka-Mawa-Bhanga expressway to facilitate toll collection from the three bridges including the multipurpose Padma Bridge on the highway in their crossing.  He noted that the KEC will work as a service provider for the operation and maintenance of the ITS where revenue collection will be fully automatic. The vehicles GPRS system will be utilised in the automatic toll collection system, he added. Shamsul, however, did not give any detail of the financial involvement in the contract. He said the proposal will come again to the Cabinet Division for the final approval of the Cabinet Committee on Public Purchase where details of the contract will be placed.    Officials said the ITS is a part of the project titled: “Improving the reliability and safety on national highway corridors of Bangladesh”. The project aims to make the road transport infrastructure of Bangladesh  safer, reliable, and sustainable; use ICT for better, efficient and effective traffic management; and enhance the institutional capacity of RHD for road and traffic management. The officials said the KOICA  has been supporting the government with a budget of $8.9 million from 2020-2023 for establishment of ITS master plan, architecture and standard, implementation of pilot project, capacity building of RHD, RTHD and other relevant organizations of the government of Bangladesh. Also read: Dhaka-Mymensingh highway to be upgraded to expressway Meanwhile, the Cabinet Committee on Public Purchase in a separate meeting approved a total of 8 procurement proposals. A proposal of the Roads and Highway Division received approval of the committee for awarding a Tk 251.60 crore contract to National Development Engineers Ltd., to set up a road research and training centre and maintenance work under the Elenga-Hatikamrul-Rangpur highway 4-lane Improvement project. The Public Works Department’s proposal to award a Tk 65.98 crore contract to the Joint Venture of (1) TBEAL; (2) STI and (3) TEC for construction of a 15-story residential building at Cumilla Police line for Bangladesh police received the committee’s approval.   A proposal of the Education Ministry received the nod of the committee to award contracts to 11 bidders for printing, binding and supply of 1.07 crore books for students of different classes of 2022 at Tk 25.05 crore. The committee approved a proposal of the Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) to award a Tk 125.42 crore contract to China Energy Engineering Group Anhui No.1 Electric Power Construction Co. Ltd., for implementing a power distribution project in Kumilla on turnkey basis. The committee gave nod to a proposal of the Ministry of Parbatta Chattagram Hill-Tracts Affairs to award a Tk 202.33 crore contract to Bangladesh Machine Tools Factory Limited for installation of 40,000 solar home systems, each having 100 watt-peak capacity, and 2500 solar community system, each having 320 watt-peak capacity, at three hill districts. Three separate proposals of the Bangladesh Chemical Industries Corporation (BCIC) received the nods of the Cabinet body. Of these, the BCIC will import 30,000 metric tons of bulk prilled urea fertilizer from Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC) at a cost of Tk 119.82 crore with value of each metric ton US$470. It will purchase 30,000 MT of bagged granular urea fertilizer from Karnaphuli Fertiliser Company at Tk 111.11 crore which each metric ton value at US$431.   The BCIC will import 30,000 mt of phosphoric acid from three firms at Tk 193.17 crore.