DHAKA, June 26 (NsNewsWire) — Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Sunday inaugurated construction work of the 2.5 billion US dollars metro rail service project.
The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) is providing 165.95 billion taka of the 220 billion taka project covering a distance of 20km.
Through a video conference from a function in Dhaka’s Bangabandhu International Conference Centre (BICC) also known as Bangladesh China Friendship Conference Center, Hasina inaugurated the construction work of the metro rail service which is expected to transport 60,000 passengers an hour.
In the first phase, 11 kilometers would be completed by 2019 and 4.4 kilometers by 2020.
The remaining 4.7 kilometers was expected to be completed by 2022.
An official had earlier said the overhead construction of metro rail can help the Bangladeshi government’s efforts to ease traffic gridlock in Dhaka which has only 436 km of 4-lane roads and 1,408 km of 2-lane roads.
(1 U.S. dollar equals to about 79 taka)