Shafiqul Islam (Jami)
Cabinet Secretary Khandaker Anwarul Islam hopes that the Padma Bridge, the dream of the people of the southern region, will be opened in or around June 2022. He said in a briefing at the secretariat after the cabinet meeting on Monday that the Padma Bridge has progressed by 87 percent. Hopefully, it will be open for traffic on or around 30th June, In-sha Allah. In 1998, when the Awami League-led government was in power, it took the initiative to build the Padma Bridge. But it takes a long time to start. When the Awami League formed the government again in 2009, it took the initiative to build the Padma Bridge.

The World Bank has come up with a loan assistance of around TK 10,000 crore for the project. But the implementation of the Padma Bridge project was delayed as the proposal was not accepted. In July 2010, after evaluating the pre-qualification tenders for the construction of the bridge, five bidders were selected and sent to the World Bank for no objection, but the company suspended it.

Then the World Bank brought allegations of ‘possible corruption’ in the Padma Bridge. After a long tug of war, Bangladesh said no to the World Bank. In the end, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina announced the construction of the Padma Bridge with her own funds, leaving the design unchanged. That huge work started in December 2014. On November 10, the last phase of work on the Padma Bridge was started. One hundred millimeter thick pitch welding [carpeting] will be of two layers. The first layer will be 60 millimeters and the second layer will be 40 millimeters.

Meanwhile, the incidence of rape, violence against women and robbery has increased in the fiscal year 2020-21 as compared to the fiscal year 2019-20. This information has been revealed from the annual report of the ministries and departments regarding the activities of the fiscal year 2020-21 in the cabinet meeting on Monday. According to the Rules of Business, annual reports on the activities of all ministries and departments are presented to the Cabinet in each financial year.

There were 5,842 rapes in the fiscal year 2019-20, 7,222 in the year 2020-21 and 12,660 cases of violence against women in the fiscal year 2019-20 and increased to 14,567 in the year 2020-21.

Regarding the law and order situation, he said, “We have not received any report of such deterioration in the law and order situation till June 30. The total number of cases in the 2019-20 financial year was 6 lac 61 thousand. At the end of the fiscal year 2020-21, the number of cases stood at 5 lac 69 thousand 362. About 91,000 cases have been reduced.