Govt must stand off harmful CRB development plan Published: 00:00, Jul 29,2021
THE government’s move to build a hospital complex — a 100-seat medical college, a 500-bed hospital and a nursing institute — spanning about 1.43 hectares of land in the area of the Central Railway Building, home to the railway’s east zone headquarters that was declared a heritage site by the Chattogram Development Authority in 2009, appears to be an example of an aggressive development policy that has development, and not the environment, as a priority agenda at the cost of all else. The Bangladesh Railway entered into an agreement with United Enterprise Company Ltd on March 8, 2020 to build the hospital complex under a public-private partnership scheme involving about Tk 4 billion. The cabinet committee on economic affairs approved the project on August 14, 2013. The is not the first such move of building structures in an open space. A few months ago, the government authorities cut down trees in the historic park of Suhrawardy Udyan in Dhaka to make room for restaurants and other structures as part of the third phase, meant to beautify the place and make it more green, of a project of the liberation war affairs ministry, triggering protests by civic groups.