M Rahmatullah dies at 75

M Rahmatullah, a former UN transport specialist, died on Wednesday after a prolonged illness.

Senior Correspondentbdnews24.com
Published : 28 May 2014, 12:03 PM
Updated : 28 May 2014, 12:03 PM

He was 75.

He had been suffering from cancer for over three years, the members of his family said.

Ahsan H Mansur, executive director of the Policy Research Institute in which Rahmatullah was a Senior Fellow, told bdnews24.com that he was terminally ill with pancreatic cancer.

He died at a Dhaka hospital on Wednesday morning.

“We will miss him very much,” Mansur said, recalling his work in the transport sector.
“I think he was the best transportation specialist”.
Rahmatullah retired in Jun 2000 after serving 22 years with the United Nations social and economic commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN-ESCAP).
He was a director of the transport and infrastructure development sector when he retired.
According to his biography, he left his government job in 1978 to join UN-ESCAP. He was the Joint Chief/Joint Secretary, (Transport) of the Planning Commission.
He started his career in 1962 as a Lecturer in the Civil Engineering Department of the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), then EPUET.
A PhD from the UK’s University of Liverpool, he was also the founding faculty member of Urban and Regional Planning Department of that university in 1968.
He authored two policy briefs on transport for politicians in 2001 and 2003 after his retirement from the UN job.
He was known for pursuing the issue of regional cooperation in transport among SAARC and BCIM – Bangladesh, China, India and Myanmar – countries.
He also authored the SAARC Regional Multimodal Transport Study (SRMTS) in 2005-2006 as its Team Leader.
Family members say he will be laid to rest at Banani graveyard on Wednesday after a Namaj-e-Janaja at Gulshan Azad mosque.