DHAKA: Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has inaugurated the country’s longest bridge, which took eight years to build and was plagued by delays, political conflict, high costs and graft allegations.
The opening of the bridge over the turbulent Padma River caps a key infrastructure goal by Hasina and has been billed by her government as the jewel in its crown, which shows the grit, determination and resilience of the administration in the face of international pressure and domestic criticism.
Construction of the six-kilometer bridge by a Chinese company began in November 2015, with the aim of connecting the country’s southwestern region with the capital, Dhaka, via road and rail. The double-layer steel truss bridge incorporates a four-lane highway on an upper level along with a single-track railway on the lower level.
Costing $3.86 billion, it is one of the largest projects Bangladesh has ever undertaken. The entire amount is financed by its own government after the World Bank and other global lending agencies pulled out of the project following a corruption scandal involving a Canadian construction company linked to the bridge.
Canadian engineering firm SNC-Lavalin was accused of bribing officials overseeing the project and was banned from bidding on World Bank projects for a decade. Prosecutors in Canada eventually declined to pursue graft charges against company executives after a court ruled some wiretap evidence against them was inadmissible.
Sheikh Hasina declared that her government would self-fund the project. Her decision faced a battery of skepticism from the country’s economists as well as political opponents, since Bangladesh didn’t have any prior experience building such infrastructure without financial support from several donors.
At Saturday’s bridge opening ceremony, Hasina reminded a crowd about that skepticism. “Some people said we would always be beholden to others but our father of the nation, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, (Hasina’s father) taught us the importance of self-respect.”
“This Padma Bridge is not a pile of brick and cement,” she said. “This bridge is a symbol of Bangladesh’s pride, honor and ability.”
(VOA)
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