Rajuk plans two more housing projects for lawmakers

Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha (Rajuk), with the prime and public works ministers' consent, will implement two more land development schemes to provide lawmakers and some professionals housing plots, its chairman announced yesterday.

"We have already identified two proposed sites but we do not want to disclose those lest it creates any public reaction," GM Jainal Abedin Bhuiya told a press conference at its head office in the capital. 

New lawmakers, who have not got housing plots in the capital yet, lobbied  with the public works minister, who then directed Rajuk, he said.

Rajuk organised the programme to inform of the role it played in the last one year. Rajuk board members, among others, were present.

Rajuk has miserably faltered on its foremost duty of ensuring a planned capital city with development control, said Salma A Shafi, a researcher on housing and land at the Centre for Urban Studies. This is due to a conflict of interest, as while being a planning regulator, it is simultaneously a land developer involved in housing projects, she said.

Mid last year, Housing and Public Works Minister Mosharraf Hossain at a public meeting in the capital said the government would not take up any more housing projects with Rajuk. His predecessor, Abdul Mannan Khan, too made a similar public declaration in mid-2012.

So far, Rajuk developed a number of housing schemes like the Uttara model town, Purbachal New Town and Jheelmil Residential Area with a limited number of plots.

After three years' delay, it has resumed constructing 79 buildings containing 6,600 flats in Uttara Third Phase. Apart from plots, Purbachal will have 60,000 flats while Jheelmil 10,000.  

The Rajuk chairman was asked why they have not reclaimed, keeping with the Detailed Area Plan (DAP) and a High Court order, conservable flood flow zones and low-lying water retention areas which have been filled with earth by illegal real estate developers. "The court order is rational but its execution is difficult," he replied.

He was also asked why they amended DAP to legalise illegal housing businesses in and around the capital and why they have not stopped rampant illegal commercialisation of residential neighbourhoods like Gulshan, Dhanmondi, Banani, Baridhara and Uttara. Jainal Abedin just said, "We and the minister are firm about it." Innumerable buildings have been constructed in violation of the approved plan in the five areas, he said, adding that they now have a 1,980-strong manpower in place of the previous 1,080 and hoped to perform better.