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PM opens Swarighat-Ashulia section of circular waterway
3/4/2005
ASHULIA, Mar 3 (UNB): Prime Minister Khaleda Zia today inaugurated the 26.5-kilometre Swarighat-Ashulia section of a circular waterway around the capital.
The waterway will ease a nagging pressure on the city's communications network through providing cheaper and cleaner transportation facility.
In the first phase of the waterways project, people can now travel and carry goods from Ashulia to Swarighat, the trading heartland of the capital.
Nearly one hundred thousand people are expected to commute and 6,000 tonnes of goods, to be transported through the natural route of communications.
Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority (BIWTA) under the Ministry of Shipping is implementing the Tk 359.9-million Circular Waterways Project.
The total project will have ten landing-stations-- each at Swarighat, Kholamora, Lalbagh, Basila, Rayerbazar, Gabtali, Aminbazar, Shirnirtek, Berulia and Ashulia.
It will be completed by the end of this year and help then alleviate particularly traffic load problem on the Narayanganj-Dhaka land route.
Addressing the opening function at Ashulia BIWTA landing-station, Prime Minister Khaleda Zia said her government wants to carry forward the development activities that are suitable to the country's tradition and nature. It wants to utilise the geophysical and natural advantages for ensuring national prosperity, she said.
"Through this, we can find out real Bangladesh--- we can tap the country's immense potentialities -- and we can, in the process thereof, do the impossible," she told the function.
The function was attended by ministers, MPs, representatives of various professional groups and a large number of local people.
On completion of the project, the load on the land route, she said, will be lessened, facilitating, thus, the transportation of passengers and goods between Dhaka and its twin-city Narayanganj.
The Prime Minister directed the authorities concerned to start the work of the second phase of the project.
Presided over by Shipping Minister Akbar Hossain, the function was addressed, among others, by Local Government and Rural Development (LGRD) Minister Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan, Communications Minister Nazmul Huda and BIWTA Chairman Reaz Hassan Khandokar.
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