Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Monday directed the authorities concerned to complete a feasibility study on the selection of a new site for the proposed Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib International Airport within a week.
The premier issued the directive while presiding over the weekly Cabinet meeting at the secretariat, a minister told New Age.
The civil aviation minister, GM Quader, told the meeting that a feasibility study was being conducted in four areas of Madaripur-Faridpur and Munshiganj on both sides of the river Padma to select a new site for the Tk 50,000-crore airport project.
The government in early February changed its decision to build an international airport at Arial Beel in Munshiganj in response to violent protests by local people and the objections of environmentalists who pointed out that the water-body was a valuable source of food.
LGRD and cooperatives minister Syed Ashraful Islam said the authorities should take immediate steps to upgrade the status of Shahjalal International Airport to Category 1 from Category 2 by raising the standard of safety and service.
Expressing concern over the poor facilities and service of the private airlines, he said that most of them cannot maintain the schedule of flights. 'Even the air-conditioning systems of some their planes do not function,' complained the LGRD minister in the meeting.
The civil aviation minister said that measures were under way to upgrade the country's biggest airport's status to Category 1 by October 2011, and by that time two passenger planes would be delivered by Boeing to Biman as per the deal.
It was reported that Arial Beel was selected as a site for the new airport without conducting a geological survey or a feasibility study. Villagers of Srinagar teamed up under the banner of Arial Beel Raksha Committee and protested against the government's move to build the airport on productive farmland and wetland.
On February 2 Sheikh Hasina told a Cabinet meeting that the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib International Airport would not be constructed in Munshiganj if the local people did not want it, and said that the government would look for another site on the south bank of the Padma.
A police officer was killed and more than a hundred people, including journalists and policemen, were injured when demonstrators, opposing the government's plan to build the airport, clashed with the law enforcers at Hasara point on the Dhaka-Mawa Road in Srinagar on January 31.
There are three international and five domestic airports in the country, all of which remain under-used for lack of proper management, according to officials.
Source : New Age
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