Dr Mohammad Rahmatullah (1940-2014)
Colleagues at CPD deeply grieve at the sad demise of Dr Mohammad Rahmatullah, a Senior Fellow at Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD). We shall recall with profound gratitude his contribution to CPD.
Dr Rahmatullah passed away suffering from pancreatic cancer at the age of 74 on Wednesday, 28 May 2014.
[box title=”Short biography of Dr Mohammad Rahmatullah” color=”#333333″]Dr Rahmatullah joined the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) in 2000 after 22 years of service with UN. During his stay, he authored the CPD Policy Briefs on Transport and Infrastructure and wrote a number of papers on regional cooperation in transport for presentation at international conferences.
Prior to his tenure at CPD, Dr Rahmatullah was the Director of Transport and Infrastructure Division at UNESCAP, Bangkok. He was an internationally reputed Transport Specialist with over 44 years of experience in Bangladesh and abroad. His major areas of work include, transport policy development, urban transport development, energy efficiency in transport, promotion of CNG vehicles, private sector involvement in infrastructure development and management, intra and inter-regional land and land-cum-sea transport linkages, international traffic movement at border crossing, etc.
As a Transport Specialist, during 2005-06, he authored the SAARC Regional Multimodal Transport Study (SRMTS) as its Team Leader. He also made valuable contribution in the preparation of the Strategic Transport Plan (STP) for Greater Dhaka in 2006. In mid-2007, as a Deputy Team Leader, he contributed in the preparation of Road Master Plan for Bangladesh. Since 2005, he worked as the Transport Policy Advisor in a DFID funded TSMR programme in the Bangladesh Planning Commission. He made substantial contribution in drafting the Integrated Multimodal Transport Policy (IMTP) of Bangladesh. He was also an Advisor to the establishment of Road Fund in Bangladesh. In 2008-2009, he made substantial contribution in preparing the Railway Master Plan and the Inland Water Transport (IWT) Master Plan for Bangladesh.
In Bangladesh, he was the Joint Chief, Physical Infrastructure Division, Planning Commission, which he left in 1978 to join the UNESCAP. He started his career in 1962 as a Lecturer in the Civil Engineering Department of BUET and obtained the degree of Master of Civic Design (MCD) in 1966 and PhD in Transportation Planning in 1968, both from the University of Liverpool, UK. He was a founding faculty member of Urban and Regional Planning Department at BUET, in 1968. He was a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers, Bangladesh as well as Bangladesh Institute of Planners, Dhaka and a Fellow of EDI, World Bank, USA.
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