Rajuk plans another ‘pleasure trip’ for 35 govt officials, MPs

The Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha is planning another ‘study tour’ abroad for 35 officials and lawmakers amid criticism that such tours yielded no visible results in making Dhaka a planned city.
This year Rajuk has arranged the tour for 18 of its officials including eight bureaucrats serving Rajuk on deputation,
nine lawmakers, five representatives of housing and public works ministry and the rest three from Prime Minister’s Office and finance ministry.
The tour members splitting into five teams, each comprising seven members, would make 10-day visit each in Australia, Japan, USA, Canada and France.
Housing and public works minister and secretary of the ministry could join any of the five teams as they desired, according to a letter the Rajuk sent to the ministry on August 1.
In the letter, Rajuk said that it had arranged the tour for its officials to the developed countries to gather knowledge and have first-hand experience about urban planning, sustainable urban development, development control, Satellite Township and smart city.
The knowledge and experience gathered from the study tour, the letter also said, would be used in the successful implementation of Rajuk’s Purbachal New Town, Uttra 3rd Phase, Uttara Apartment, and Jheelmil housing projects.
But most of the tour members are the lawmakers and the bureaucrats from the housing and finance ministries though they have hardly anything to do with the projects and the town planning, said a Rajuk town planner.
He said that the study tour was meant for the engineers and planners of Rajuk but it was enjoyed by others as pleasure trips.
Officials at the Rajuk’s administration wing said this year the so-called study tour to five developed countries was planned from the last week of August, but was being delayed due to non-availability of government order.
They said that the tour might start from the last week of this month on availability government order and end in the first week of December.
Rajuk director for administration Dulal Krishna Saha, also a joint secretary who is going to enjoy the study tour for the second consecutive time, said that Rajuk got benefit from the study tour it arranged every year for the officials.
He, however, could not cite any example in which the knowledge gathered from such tour had been replicated in his administration, but said that significant changes had been made in the building plan pass process and development control with the knowledge gathered from abroad.
Bangladesh Institute of Planners general secretary Akhter Mahmud said that theoretically Rajuk’s foreign tour was useful for its projects but in practice there was no output from such tours as most of the tour members were non-technical persons.
He said Rajuk’s failure to control development in its jurisdiction areas proved that there had been no application of knowledge gathered from foreign trips in its activities.

News courtesy: www.newagebd.net