Adviser for road transport and bridges ministry Muhammad Fouzul Kabir Khan on Sunday became irate at an opening ceremony when he noticed his name on the inauguration plaque.
The incident happened when the adviser was about to open a section of the Dhaka Bypass Expressway on Sunday morning in Gazipur.
鈥業s this done by my father鈥檚 money?鈥� he retorted at the ministry officials, asking them to remove the plaque.
鈥楥hange it immediately,鈥� he said.
He said that the plaque could bear the ministry鈥檚 name or the people who did the work.聽
Later Fouzul Kabir inaugurated the expressway鈥檚 18-kilometre portion, stretching from Bhogra under Gazipur metropolitan city to Purbachal, at the expressway鈥檚 toll plaza at Bhogra by cutting ribbon.
For safety purposes, movement of the CNG-run auto-rickshaws, auto-rickshaws and motorcycles were banned on the expressway, said project officials.
Vehicles, based of category will be charged between Tk 740 and Tk 150 toll for using the expressway.
Dhaka Bypass Expressway Development Company Ltd, under the roads and bridges ministry, is implementing the Public-Private-Partnership project titled 鈥楿pgrading of Dhaka Bypass to Four Lane (Madanpur-Debogram-Bhulta-Joydebpur)鈥�.
The 48km project, when completed, will link the Dhaka-Chattogram, Dhaka-Sylhet, Dhaka-Mymensingh and Dhaka-Tangail highways and Purbachal Expressway.
Before the opening, at a rally the adviser said that efforts should be taken to produce skilled engineers in the country to avoid hiring expensive foreign engineers for infrastructure projects.聽
He lamented that compared with the neighbouring countries, costs of road construction in Bangladesh was much higher.
Saying that the road transport sector was vulnerable to corruption, the adviser mentioned if local engineers worked with accountability, project costs could be reduced by 20 to 30 per cent.聽
For checking the chaos in the sector, Fouzul Kabir said that communications through the railways, waterways and airways should be increased.聽
Project officials said that out of the expressway鈥檚 48km length, works of 40km stretch was completed with around 70 per cent of the total project work done.
The expressway is expected to transform travel around Dhaka cutting the journey time from Gazipur to Madanpur from two hours to just 30 minutes.
The ceremony was attended, among others, by Road Transport and Highways Division senior secretary Md Ehsanul Hauque, Roads and Highways Department chief engineer Syed Moinul Hasan, Dhaka divisional commissioner and Gazipur City Corporation administrator Sharf Uddin Ahmed Choudhury, Gazipur deputy commissioner Nafisa Arefin, and Gazipur Metropolitan Police commissioner Nazmul Karim Khan.