Gezhouba Group to Resume Construction of Elevated Transit Line in Bangladesh

On September 2022, Bangladesh’s government allowed Gezhouba Group, a road-building firm from mainland China, to resume construction of an elevated rapid bus route after suspending the project in the wake of a girder falling and killing five people in a car last month. According to a person who is familiar with the thing, the authorities have also granted the Gezhouba Group a one-year extension on the project after it gave the government assurances about implementing safety measures to prevent other accidents from happening.

The project, valued at BDT 42.6 billion (USD 450 million), is being financed by the Asian Development Bank (ADB). When the project is completed, the transit line will connect the neighboring Gazipur district with Dhaka’s Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport, in a project that aims to ease traffic congestion on a busy highway connecting the two points. In 2016, the Gezhouba Group was awarded the contract for the project. Its original end date was June 2020, but the project got delayed multiple times amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and the company was then given a new deadline for finishing the project by June 2021.