KOICA to promote effective road management system to reduce time and accidents in Bangladesh

Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) Bangladesh organised a meeting for the project titled “Improving the reliability and safety on National Highway Corridors of Bangladesh by Introduction of Intelligent Transport Systems”.

Held on Thursday noon through virtual platform, the KOICA selected Project Management Consulting (PMC) team organized in 5-company-joint-supply-structure of 'Korea Expressway Corporation and Korea Transport Institute along with Soosung Engineering, S-traffic' and Winitech' who also joined in this meeting from South Korea.

The main objective of the meeting was to share the overall project aim -- make road transport infrastructure of Bangladesh more safe, reliable, and sustainable, use ICT for better, efficient and effective traffic management and enhance the institutional capacity of RHD for road and traffic management.

They discussed the statement of work, project scope, timeline, deliverables in the project and future implementation plans with the Roads and Highways Department (RHD).

KOICA will support a budget of $8.9 million from 2020-2023 for establishment of Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) Master Plan, Architecture and Standard, Implementation of Pilot Project, Capacity Building of RHD, RTHD and other relevant organization of Government of Bangladesh.

Ms. Young-Ah Doh, County Director of KOICA, in her speech highlighted that transportation sector is the one of Korea’s development priority areas for Bangladesh. Through this comprehensive support from Republic of Korea, it is believed that Bangladesh can develop Road & Safety Master Plan along with establishment of effective road management system which will reduce time and accidents for much-needed improved road conditions in the country.

Md. Nazrul Islam, Secretary of Roads Transport and Highways Division, and Md. Abdus Safur, Chief Engineer of Roads and Highways Department, shared their informative speech and requested close partnership with KOICA.

The Secretary mentioned The Road Transport & Highways Division has been working relentlessly to achieve the targets of Vision-2021, UN Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 and the goal of 2041.

He also mentioned that this is a dream project for Bangladesh as ITS would be implemented for the very first time, so he requested to prepare Time-bound Action Plan to achieve the project goal.

He also expresses his deep gratitude to KOICA for the ITS project.