Automatic vehicle inspection centres yet to be operational

Shahin Akhter

The Bangladesh Road Transport Authority is planning to appoint local consultants to run the five automatic vehicle inspection centres lying idle for more than a decade.

Since the Danish International Development Agency handed over the centres, set up under a joint road maintenance and rehabilitation project, to BRTA in 1999, the authorities failed to attract foreign consultants to make the plants operative.

BRTA engineering department director Mohammad Saiful Haque told New Age that under the joint project with Danida, five vehicle inspection centres had been set up in different parts of the country in 1997-98 fiscal years.

Each of the centres, with a capacity to inspected about 150 vehicles per day, was set up at a cost of Tk one crore, he said.

‘But the Danida consultants left the country in 1999 without supporting the operational side of the plants and as a result they could not work for a single day,’ he said.

Saiful Haque said that the BRTA had tried to attract different foreign companies, but they did not show interest in the work.

‘So we have asked the communications ministry to invite tender to appoint local consultants and activate the plants as soon as possible,’ he said.

He hoped tender would be floated for local consultants by this year.

Earlier, BRTA deputy director of engineering department Sheikh Mohammad Mahbub-e-Rabbani told New Age that the centres would check motor vehicles’ fitness by using automatic equipment, including brake testers, alignment testers, smoke testers and under-chassis checkers.

He said that two centres were set up in Mirpur and Ekuria in Dhaka and three others in Chittagong, Khulna and Rajshahi.

BRTA sources said that at present vehicles were checked manually by 57 motor vehicle inspectors all over the country.

The sources said about 16 lakh registered motor vehicles were plying the country’s roads and all of them needed annual re-registration.

More on Dhaka Map | Source: newagebd.com