Our Correspondent :
A gallant handing over ceremony was held at Dockyard and Engineering Works Ltd Narayanganj premises on Thursday for successful completion and delivery of eight multipurpose accessible rescue boats built for Department of Disaster Management. State Minister, Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief, Dr. Md. Enamur Rahman, MP, was the chief guest at the event. Also Secretary to the Disaster Management and Relief, Assistant Chief of Naval Staff (Materiel), Director General of Department of Disaster Management (DDM) and other dignitaries were present in this august event.
The contract was signed between Department of Disaster Management and Dockyard & Engineering Works Ltd., Bangladesh Navy, Narayanganj on 21 July 2020 for construction and delivery of 60 in number Multipurpose Accessible Rescue Boat in 03 years. The principal particulars of these boats are Length-54 feet, Breadth-12.50 feet, Speed-7 knot and Passenger Carrying Capacity- 80 persons. These boats will be used for the transportation of flood affected people, house hold items and cattle.
These boats also have facilities for transportation of special needs/physically challenged personnel or injured personnel from flood affected area to shelter station. The boats can also transport relief goods and serve other related purposes. Due to its less draft and underwater shape, it can land/beach in any disaster affected area and can perform relief operation. There are Life jackets, life buoy for adults and children and wheel chair, walking ramp for physically challenged people.
This project was the vision of MsSaimaWazed, the daughter of Hon’ble Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina and adviser of Disability Inclusive Disaster Risk Management (DIDRM). Dockyard & Engineering Works Ltd., Bangladesh Navy, Narayanganj has set a milestone to construct such kind of special boats by their own management which will inspire future projects of boat building. Despite Covid-19 pandemic, this organization continued it’s production by following all government imposed health protocol in order to deliver the boats timely. Rest of the boats will be delivered by next year as opined by the management of Dockyard & Engineering Works Ltd.
The yard is committed to quality and timely completion of projects. This yard was established on the bank of river Shitalakshya in Narayanganj by the British Government in 1922. In late nineties the yard was incurring losses and later it was handed over to Bangladesh Navy. After taken over by Bangladesh Navy, this organization had been progressing quite significantly and became Government’s one of the trusted organizations.
