A BDT 16.21 billion government initiative to establish engineering colleges across four divisions has failed to deliver a single completed building eight years after its launch, leaving acquired sites open for local residents to dry crops and firewood.
The scheme, designed in 2018 to expand access to quality technical education beyond the capital, build a skilled national workforce and improve employment prospects, was approved despite warnings from the Planning Commission. Officials had objected to the proposal because the implementing agency, the Directorate of Technical Education, had bypassed a mandatory feasibility study.
Despite four deadline extensions, overall implementation stands at 25 percent, with only seven of 130 work packages tendered. The project has been severely delayed by land acquisition disputes, shifting locations, design revisions, and a combination of administrative and technical complications.
Among the delayed facilities is Narail Engineering College in Khulna division, where work began in 2018 under an estimated BDT 3.94 billion budget. A site visit revealed a handful of labourers constructing a 10-storey administrative building on an eight-acre plot located one kilometre from Narail town along the highway. While the roof of the sixth floor has been cast and work on the seventh is underway, most of the site remains empty, unfilled and without a boundary wall.
Project engineers confirmed that the administrative building, budgeted at BDT 160 million, is the only structure currently under construction. Arunabh Ray, executive engineer for the Narail college, told Bonik Barta that the building is 50 percent complete, adding that tenders for two six-storey student hostels had been processed, with construction expected to start shortly. The remaining buildings will require separate ministry approval before being implemented in phases.
The broader initiative, which also covers Khagrachhari in Chattogram division, Naogaon in Rajshahi, and Thakurgaon in Rangpur, saw its original budget rise from BDT 12.22 billion to BDT 16.21 billion following a second revision before any structural work began. The initial design for each campus specified a 10-storey administrative block, three academic buildings and two student hostels. Initial tendering was restricted exclusively to the administrative blocks, none of which have been completed after nearly five years of construction.
The administrative building in Naogaon is 77 percent complete, followed by Thakurgaon at 50 percent, Narail at 45 percent, and Khagrachhari at 25 percent. Tenders have not yet been invited for the planned integrated multipurpose buildings, mosques, staff dormitories, boundary walls or earth-filling works.
An intensive evaluation by the Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division (IMED) of the planning ministry cited the lack of a feasibility study, combined with land acquisition delays, changes to the rate schedule and a protracted design process, as reasons behind the systemic delays. The project has remained gridlocked by administrative and technical complexities for eight years. The IMED identified the tendering of just four out of 65 civil works packages and three out of 65 goods packages as a primary driver of the stagnation.
Annual fiscal allocations have been provided by the government, yet the technical education directorate has disbursed only 7 percent of the total project budget over eight years. Officials linked to the project characterised this expenditure shortfall as evidence of weak implementation capacity and institutional inefficiency.
The IMED inspection team also identified structural defects within the administrative buildings currently under construction, flagging honeycombing in the beams and columns at both the Narail and Thakurgaon sites. The report noted that because multiple supervisors had been assigned to single buildings, effective oversight was entirely absent. It also highlighted a complete lack of security across all four college sites and the absence of any system to verify the quality of construction materials.
The project has caused significant internal distress within the implementing agency itself. An official from the technical education directorate told Bonik Barta anonymously that projects initiated with irregularities naturally struggle, leaving the directorate structurally stuck.
Project Director Mohammad Faisal Mufti defended the timeline, attributing the delays to a revised rate schedule in 2022, which replaced the 2018 framework, and a delay in securing technical services from the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET). He told Bonik Barta that initial land acquisition and tendering delays were the root causes, compounded by the subsequent transfer of work responsibilities to the Education Engineering Department and the Department of Architecture.
The project director added: “We are close to completing the administrative building. The tender process is underway for more buildings. If those contracts are awarded as planned, we expect to complete most of the project and begin classes by 2028. Once the academic and administrative buildings are ready, we will be able to launch academic activities, with the remaining work completed in phases.”
The operational strategy was strongly criticised by former Planning Commission Secretary Md Mamun Al Rashid, who said launching a major infrastructure project without a prior feasibility study invites irregularities.
The former secretary told Bonik Barta: “When a project proceeds without a feasibility study, it creates opportunities for corruption from the very beginning. A project should be backed by a financial assessment, a cost estimate and a preliminary design. Without those, there’s scope for arbitrary designs, substandard construction and the use of inferior building materials. It also gives the implementing agency and the project director room for irregularities. This project carries a high risk of exactly those problems. Failing to spend funds after the state has allocated them reflects institutional inefficiency. And whatever has been spent has effectively been wasted.”
Rashid concluded that if the implementing authority’s lack of competence caused these failures, the individuals involved from the initial planning stage must be held to account.
(Narail correspondent Imran Hossain contributed to this report.)