Tender for Sheikh Hasina stadium canceled

Several years ago, the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) initiated the construction of the Sheikh Hasina International Cricket Stadium, "The Boat," in Purbachal with its own funds.

Despite years of planning, things haven't moved forward much, and now there will be some more delay for the construction to start. The tender process for the stadium's construction has been canceled.

This decision was made during the first board meeting held today, Thursday, after Faruque Ahmed became the BCB president.

The meeting, which lasted several hours, concluded with the decision to cancel the tender. The BCB president stated that, given the large scale of the stadium project, they want to proceed cautiously and consider all aspects carefully.

The deadline for submitting tenders was August 30th, but the process was canceled the day before. During a press conference held at the Mirpur Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium's media room, the BCB president announced the tender cancellation at the start of the question-and-answer session.

In response to a question, Faruque explained, "The tender process for the stadium in Purbachal had a deadline of tomorrow, but we unanimously decided to cancel it."

Explaining the reason behind canceling the tender process, the BCB president said, "It was canceled because, as you know, for such a large project, there is a requirement for ministry approval.We haven't received any clear 'yes' or 'no' from them. And since there was no time, with tomorrow being the last day, we had to make this decision (to cancel). If the situation improves, and if we believe a revision is possible, we will attempt to initiate something new."

Although the construction has not started, a significant amount of money has already been spent on design and consultancy firm fees.

On Saturday, a visit to the stadium will be conducted to assess whether costs can be reduced. Faruque said, "We are all going to inspect the site because the money that has been spent so far, we can't recover 100% of it as the project is quite large."

"We will try to reduce the costs by making adjustments to the original design and focusing on essential elements like playing fields. We will also explore options to recover some of the consultancy fees that have already been paid," he added. It has been learned that the stadium's name will be changed, and the boat-shaped design that was initially finalized will no longer be used.