Badrul Ahsan :
The government plans to manufacture railway compartments locally, Bangladesh Railway (BR) officials said on Thursday.
They said a long-term project has been taken up to make the state-run train operator BR solvent on all front.
They, however, said a feasibility study in this regard would finally determine the project’s viability on all fronts.
However, the BR has already made a project proposal of Tk 6.72 billion to conduct such a feasibility study, the officials said, adding negotiations are on to get Tk 5.58 billion for the project under the second Indian Line of Credit (LoC).
According to the BR, the new compartment workshop is likely to be set up in Saidpur of Nilphamari district as the area has huge lands.
The existing Saidpur Railway Workshop, the largest workshop of the BR set up on 112 acres of land in the 1960s, does the repair and maintenance work.
“BR needs a large number of passenger carriages as existing ones have already become age-old. If we are able to manufacture the railway compartments locally, our dependency on foreign country will be lessened,” Railway Minister Mujibul Haque told the New Nation on Thursday. “But we are now at the initial stage. After gathering knowledge about cost and other aspects, we will take final decision on it,” he added.
However, high officials of BR said, setting up of a railway carriage manufacturing workshop may not be viable in Bangladesh in terms of annual needs of such carriages in the country and cost of their production.
“The country needs to import almost all the raw materials to manufacture a carriage. Our only advantage is low labour cost which may not help make such a project cost effective,” a BR high official opined.
Although 119 carriages were imported, 1,779 maintained and 28 others repaired since 2009, the BR has taken up a plan to increase the number of carriages with a view to carrying 74 million passengers.
It has also a long-term master plan to increase the fleet with 1,120 passenger trains.
The BR, which the country inherited from the British India, had rich train and container services. It has set up rail tracks almost in all parts of the country except Barisal.
But due to lack of political will and negligence, the BR gradually became a loss-making entity.
