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Padma Bridge project may get time extension until June 2023

| Updated: January 27, 2021 16:34:20


Padma Bridge project may get time extension until June 2023

The authority concerned has finally proposed extending the deadline for completing the country's Padma Bridge until June 2022 with one more year for defect liability period.

With this, the deadline for finishing the Padma Multipurpose Bridge project will be extended for the fifth time.

Officials said the Bridge Division will soon send a proposal for the time extension until June 2023 including the time for defect liability period to Implementation, Monitoring and Evaluation Division based on the evaluation of the workload of the Tk 301.19 billion project last week.

"The project office has finally got the assessment of the time to be needed for completing the rest work of the 6.15-kilometre bridge. Based on the workload assessment from its construction supervision consultant, extension of another year for both the bridge work and defect liability period has been proposed," said an official of the division.

He said the deadline will be finalised after getting approval from the Planning Commission. The IMED will first evaluate the proposal and later send it to the PC.

The Bangladesh Bridge Authority (BBA), the executing agency of the country's longest bridge, has earlier re-fixed the target of completing the bridge work by December 2021 after missing deadlines four times - 2014, 2018 and 2019.

"We will seek time till June 2022 for the completion of the Padma Bridge, but a direction will be there to complete it for inauguration by March," said Bridge Secretary Mohammad Belayet Hossain.

He, however, said the project would need time till June for completion of the river training work as its progress is slow comparing to the main bridge construction work.

The PMB project is one of the mega projects hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic. After enjoying new year holiday in January last year, a good number of Chinese experts and technicians could not join the project site due to lockdown imposed by China following the outbreak of Covid-19.

Despite the slow progress of the project, the main bridge construction work has picked up steam with completion of the steel-truss composite work. The Chinese contractor has completed placement of entire 21 spans in December last, making the entire 6.15-km bridge visible.

 

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