A day after Finance Minister AMA Muhith expressed doubt about issuing work order for the Padma Bridge project by December, Communications Minister Obaidul Quader on Thursday said the evaluation committee of the project would decide when the work order would be issued.
“After submission of the bids, the evaluation committee will decide when the work order would be issued and the beginning of the main construction work of the bridge would depend on the decision of the evaluation committee,” he told reporters replying to their queries at his secretariat office.
Earlier voicing his high hope that the bidders would respond to the international tender for Padma Bridge Project floated on Wednesday, Finance Minister AMA Muhith expressed his doubt about issuing the work order by December next due to the government’s ‘tight schedule’.
“I hope the bidders will respond, but the tight schedule that we’re following, I’m not sure whether we’ll be able to give the order by this December,” he told reporters answering to their queries at his secretariat office while inaugurating Jalalabad 14-km electricity line through mobile phone.
Noting that the responsibility of the Finance Minister is to ensuring financing for the project while that of the Communications Ministry is to ensure its implementation, Obaidul Quader said, “That means everyone has to limit themselves according to their responsibility,”
Replying to another question, Quader said the tender for the Bridge has not been floated for any political reason, but as part of implementation process of the project.
The Communications Minister said though the present government has only four months’ time, full implementation of the bridge project would take four years. “I haven’t said we won’t be able to begin the work in four months.”
Quader said it was a mistake for the government to wait for the second time return of the World Bank in the Padma Bridge project when the government had decided to go ahead with the project with own fund. “We could have started the work of the bridge much ahead had not we waited for the return of the World Bank.”
Meanwhile, replying to a question on the Padma Bridge project at the Cabinet Division on Thursday, Finance Minister AMA Muhith said that he would give a statement on Padma Bridge in his concluding remarks at the current budget session in parliament, which would be the authentic government statement.
Earlier on Wednesday, the government floated an international tender for the main infrastructure of the much-hyped Padma Bridge project, paving the way for implementing its election pledge.
The tender invitation was put on the website of the Bridges Division around 2:30pm.
