Bangladesh Railway (BR) will receive 10 locomotives from India on Monday, to overcome its locomotive crisis.
India would hand over the locomotives as grants.
“The broad gauge locomotives, which India is giving as gift, would be handed over at 3:00pm on July 27 through Darshana-Gede Interchange Point,” Railways Ministry’s Senior Information Officer Shariful Alam said today.
Railways Minister Nurul Islam Sujan, Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen and Indian Railways Minister Piyush Goyal will attend the ceremony virtually, he added.
All the ten broad gauge locomotives Indian Railway is going to hand over to BR were commissioned in between September 2012 and December 2015, said officials.
With 72 percent locomotives of BR already crossing their economic life, the government took initiatives last year to hire locomotives from India for the first time to help them overcome the crisis.
In April last year, BR sent a proposal to the railways ministry to “hire” or “get as courtesy” 20 railway engines (10 broad gauge and 10 meter gauge) from India until the first batch of 70 locomotives that Bangladesh bought from the US and South Korea start arriving mid-next year.
“Until then, the 10 locomotives would be very helpful,” BR’s Director General Md Shamsuzzaman told The Daily Star on July 13.
However, BR will not bring meter gauge (MG) locomotives from India. They did not get suitable MG locomotives as India phased out such engines long ago, Shamsuzzaman added.
According to BR documents from May last year, it had 178 MG locomotives, of which 139 have crossed their 20-year economic life. Of its 90 BG locomotives, 55 have completed their economic life.
