Project management challenges in Bangladesh

At the moment, a significant number of different development initiatives are being carried out in Bangladesh. The country's economy has been booming; therefore, it stands to reason that various development projects will have taken place throughout the country. Development administration that is both effective and efficient is required if these projects are to be completed successfully. Development administration frequently takes charge of creating development plans and ensuring that they are implemented correctly and on schedule to bring about desired socioeconomic transformations.

Several organizations working as development administrations in Bangladesh to ensure development activities are successful. For instance, in Bangladesh, the National Parliament must first approve the project planning before it can be given to the National Economic Council (NEC). The plan is improved and approved by NEC before being sent to ECNEC for final approval. ECNEC sends the plan to the Ministry of Planning, which assists in developing and implementing policies and analyzes their effects on the economy. The Planning Commission, through Annual Development Plans and the Five-year plans, translates the ideas, aspirations and commitment of government.

Managing development projects, however, is not a simple process and is instead surrounded by a wide variety of hurdles. Bangladesh is no exception to this. Corruption, a slow speed of project formulation and implementation, dependence on bureaucrats, an absence of people's participation, political culture, a lack of coordination and cooperation among departments, foreign aid and conditionality, the complexity of land acquisition and site selection, a lack of accountability and transparency, and other factors can be considered to be major constraints in the project management in Bangladesh.

Corruption is not a new-fangled incident in Bangladesh. In recent years, we have seen unimaginable anomalies in the Ruppoor nuclear power plant and Faridpur Medical College. The World Bank estimates that corruption prevents the GDP from growing by 2 to 3% annually. If the government reduces corruption, per capita income may increase by double, Transparency International says.

Furthermore, most of the development projects in Bangladesh are bureaucratically conceived, bureaucratically implemented, and bureaucratically evaluated. Needless to say, in a developing country with a colonial past, bureaucracy plays a disproportionately prominent role in policy-making and enjoys an extensive range of discretionary powers.

Projects are frequently started without consulting stakeholders. The planning process is typically top-down, with limited engagement from the public and frequent disregard by planners for the valid concerns and claims of citizens. Without considering the troubled state of rural areas, planners are highly interested in building "Superstructures" in urban areas. Although people are the main focus of development planning, active participation in plan formation is not possible.

At the local level, though, there is a provision for participating people in development activities, such as a participatory budgeting system. A study results indicate that due to citizen ignorance, Union Parishad's denial, and a number of other issues, the overall involvement scope for decision-making is constrained.

In addition, our political culture has been polarized and dominated by two parties, BNP and Awami League. It is clear that there is no guarantee that the project will continue because the following government may decide to reject it. As a result, it is impossible to implement development policies as they ought to be. For example, "The community clinics were developed to give impoverished people in both urban and rural areas access to healthcare. Regrettably, the initiative was abandoned once the Awami League government of the time was overthrown in 2001. 10,624 clinics were back in operation when the AL administration regained power in 2009.

Moreover, a reliable and appropriate coordination method must be used to move all the concerned parties in a coordinated manner to accomplish the project's work plan. However, most of the time no such mechanism for coordination has been discovered in our project activities. Hence, there has been a lack of information sharing and coordination issues among various departments in the project. According to a study, the government loses crores of taka yearly because utility services don't coordinate when digging up city roads and pavements for various work. During the rainy season, roadways and pavements are dug up to lay sewerage, gas, electricity, and phone wires. Substantial areas of the capital are submerged, and sewage coupled with rainwater makes life unpleasant.

In Bangladesh, when a project is being developed, feasibility studies and surveys are not effectively conducted. The absence of skilled labour is another significant contributing factor to the projects' failure. Consequently, cost control, time management, and quality assurance for the project are impossible.
Many projects are failing to maintain its deadline. Counterproductive guidance on the part of the concerned institutions due to red tape and "rent-seeking" pressures from various powerful quarters are just a few of the causes, including poor initial design, delays in land acquisition and procurement, complicated fund release procedures etc. Because of these constraints, funding for these projects frequently remains untouched. The capacity of the government to carry out proper project design, selection, implementation, and evaluation is confined. Additionally limiting the effectiveness of implementation are the legal framework and the fragmented institutional arrangements, which have hampered progress, particularly for the Dhaka MRT.

It goes without saying that corruption, the primary barrier, ought to be diminished at first, albeit it needs a long time, none but proper monitoring and evaluation during the project implementation time can solve the issue. A fundamental requirement, undoubtedly, for any development is political cooperation. Major political parties should cooperate with one another in matters of development while taking into account the welfare of the populace. And what's more, people and stakeholders' opinion is needed to make the project fruitful.
The writer is a research assistant, Centre for Advanced Social Research, Dhaka