The “Buriganga River Restoration Project (New Dhaleswari-Pungli-Bangshi-Turag-Buriganga river system)” has been virtually stalled for various reasons, including delay in funds allocation, non-availability of dredgers and non-participation of bidders in the tender process. The Bangladesh Water Development Board (BWDB) project, worth Tk. 944.09 crore, was supposed to take off in December last year.
Sunil Baran Debroy, project director, said it would be necessary to minimise project costs without altering its range of benefits. The project costs may escalate to about Tk. 1,300 crore, he added. The project was taken up to bring life back to the Buriganga, Turag, Balu and Shitlakkhya rivers by diverting water from the Jamuna.
According to BWDB sources, work is going on to remove earth from the 20-km-long Dhaleswari river bed in Tangail. The work will be completed by 2013.
The project work would start from Joker Char at Kalihati upazila in Tangail, just down the Bangabandhu Jamuna Bridge. However, the project would not be completed before 2015 owing to delay in disbursement of funds, lack of adequate dredgers and non-participation of bidders in the tender process, sources said.
Debroy said they would be able to start dredging of about 28.90 km on the Pungli river in Tangail from the last week of December. The government has allocated Tk. 166.61 crore for dredging the Pungli river, and another proposal to dredge a stretch of 26.45 km of the Pungli river has been sent to the cabinet purchase committee for approval, he added.
“We’ve started dredging work in the Turag river near Ashulia, as part of the project, at a cost of Tk 24.76 crore,” Debroy told The Independent. “Dredging work on a stretch of 6.5 km of the Turag is being implemented in two phases. As much as 57 per cent of the dredging work has been completed on the first three km, and only seven per cent on the remaining stretch,” he added.
“The rainy season is not suitable for dredging. The increased depth of water in the river hampers dredging during this period,” he explained. At least 35 dredgers will be needed to dredge a 73-km stretch of the Pungli and Turag, Debroy said. He added that the BWDB has only 18 dredgers.
“We want to infuse a new life into the Buriganga, Turag, Balu and the Shitalakkhya by diverting fresh waters from the Jamuna,” the BWDB chief engineer said. About 7.11 crore cubic metres of earth will be have to be removed from the 162-km-long waterways of the project. A total of 5.53 crore cubic metres of earth will be removed manually and 1.57 crore cubic metres would be cleaned through dredging.
Debroy said the Jamuna waters would be brought to the Turag and Buriganga through the New Dhaleshwari river in Tangail as well as the Pungli and Bangshi rivers. “It will improve the quality of water and increase the flow of water in the Buriganga and Turag during the dry season. Besides, it will also increase the depth of these rivers,” he added. Successful implementation of the project will help develop irrigation facilities, fisheries, reduce water filtration costs and put a check on encroachment of rivers.
-With The Independent input
