Dhaka: Bangladesh has issued an order to redesign the capital Dhaka, requiring the reclamation of 3,000 acres of land occupied by influential real estate companies, earlier referred to as "land pirates" by a senior government official.
"The government had announced the DAP [Detailed Area Plan] for the capital Dhaka to prevent flooding and ease traffic congestion in the city. This will require us to reclaim about 3,000 acres of land from the real estate companies," a spokesman of the regulatory Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha (Rajuk) told Gulf News.
Loopholes
He added that Rajuk would launch a campaign to reclaim the land marked as a flood-flow zone and agricultural land in and around the capital while out of the total 590 square miles of jurisdiction area in the area plan, 33.35 per cent was kept for urban and rural residential and mixed purposes, which were expected to house 18.53 million people by 2015.
Several real estate companies, however, have already built high-rise residential projects involving billions of takas while several hundred of such plots have already been sold despite media campaigns against land grabbing for unplanned projects — exposing Dhaka, the home of an estimated 10.5 million people, to traffic jams and water logging during monsoon rains. According to earlier newspaper reports, several of the housing project areas were also occupied by ruling Awami League leaders.
The Daily Star newspaper, however, feared that despite Tuesday's government gazette notification approving the DAP, certain errant land development projects were likely to remain unscathed due to "legal loopholes".
Quoting government officials, the report said the authorities might need to take a softer stance in certain cases as the Town Improvement Act, Wetland Conservation Act and the DAP itself provide a chance of appeal for violators, and discretionary authority for government high officials.
State minister for public works and housing Abdul Mannan, who earlier declared a crusade against land grabbers calling real estate companies "land pirates", told the paper the government might need to accept "violations in certain cases".
