How impossible made possible defying Holey Artisan attack, Covid

Country's first metro rail is now visible and slated for partial opening late-December. But, the construction of the metro rail in Dhaka – one of the densely populated cities of the world – was a herculean task. 

From the very beginning of the project, we had to face multiple challenges including alignment debates, Dhaka University student protests, a militant attack and complicated shifting of the utility lines. Besides, the construction had to feel how Dhaka people were enduring traffic woes due to narrowed roads.

As soon as we started the work, questions arose whether the metro rail was damaging the original design of the Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban area. Subsequently, it was found that our project did not include the Khejur Bagan area – where the parliament and other establishments are located – in the design. 

Another obstacle we faced was that hundreds of students of Dhaka University protested the route alignment, claiming that the route would spoil the calm environment of the campus. We had to handle it through discussions with the authorities. 

Apart from above hiccups, major blows we had to deal with were the 2016-Dhaka Cafe attack by militants, which killed seven Japanese citizens who were working for the project, and the Covid pandemic, which slowed down the implementation to a great extent.      

The slain Japanese citizens were working in MRT-5 and MRT-1. The real picture was unclear initially when the heinous attack was unfolding in Holey Artisan Bakery on 1 July 2016. We were receiving unofficial messages suggesting some casualty of the foreign staffers, but we did not have the concrete information until the "Operation Thunderbolt" by the Bangladesh Army's 1st Para Commando Battalion ended the next morning. 

Bangladesh paid tribute to the people who died in the militant attack at a programme in the Army Stadium in the city. Subsequently, the bodies of the Japanese workers were sent to their country, but the fallout persisted dealing a severe blow to the construction. 

All the Japanese citizens who were then working on other metro rail projects – MRT-6, MRT-1 and MRT-5 – left Bangladesh for home soon after the incident. They said that they would return to the project site only if we could provide them with foolproof security.

The government arranged a three-tier security for them. The Japanese started to come back after the Japan International Cooperation Agency (Jica) and Japan Embassy in Dhaka briefed them about the development. 

During the period, we, however, managed to continue the work with some of the foreign workers doing home office from Japan. But there is a difference naturally between supervising the work at field-level and the virtual working. This left the construction losing the momentum it had been gaining gradually.      

Though no Japanese working on MRT-6 died in the militant attack, the full swing resumption of the implementation took up to one year.

The second blow, Covid pandemic, had more severe fallouts. As Bangladesh reported the maiden case on 8 March 2020, everyone became scared, and many Japanese packed their luggage to catch the next flight home.

No one knew how long Covid would continue its roundups. As a result, the foreign nationals went home to spend time with their families. 

In the beginning of the pandemic, the construction stopped as the lockdown was imposed. At that time, there were no scopes for working in the construction site. But we developed several scopes for continuing the work with the concept "learn to live with Covid". We are still working with it – adjusting to the new normal for living.  

We reduced the groups to 20-30 individuals from the previous 100-200. If someone got infected, the individual was sent to an isolation centre while the remaining teammates went for quarantine. 

We set up two field hospitals – one with 14-bed in Uttara and another with 20-bed in Gabtoli – for Covid cases. The hospitals were equipped with high-flow oxygen supply, but there was no intensive care unit (ICU) facility. For ICU support, we teamed up with the Japan Bangladesh Hospital in Uttara. Those initiatives helped boost the confidence among the workers.  

While our Japanese colleagues decided to return to their workplace, we discovered that there were no regular flights with Japan at that time. We had to arrange special flights and chartered flights. 

We asked the foreign colleagues to gather in key air destinations like Tokyo, Delhi and Bangkok; and we brought them back by smaller and chartered aircrafts. We even brought only six people on a plane as we wanted to keep the construction running. 

After arriving in Dhaka, the staffers would go through a Covid testing and a 14-day isolation before joining the work.   

If the Covid fallout on the project is to put simply, I would say we were running before the pandemic, while we had to struggle for making just the regular steps during the infections.  

But the good news is no metro rail worker or consultant – be it local or foreign – died of Covid infection. They got infected and some had to hospitalised, but we managed to recover eventually.

Following the Covid-induced disruptions, we increased the number of shifts to three from the previous two in some cases to catch up with the project progress. 

The first portion of the metro rail, Uttara-Agargaon stretch, will be inaugurated in December 2022. Though the original project proposal mentioned opening the entire Uttara-Motijheel phase by 2024, I hope we will be able to complete it by 2023 as the so-far progress is ahead of the schedule. 

Illustration: TBS

MAN Siddique talked to The Business Standard Senior Feature Writer Ariful Islam Mithu, who later transcribed the write-up