New DAP to protect illegal housing projects

Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha is set to prepare another detailed area plan for Dhaka metropolitan region that will virtually legalise the housing projects built in violation of the existing DAP. The 20-year duration of the existing DAP expires this year and the new DAP for 2016-2035 is being prepared under the Asian Development Bank-funded ‘Regional Development Planning Project’. Officials said that under the project they had prepared a draft structure plan, after revising the existing one, to provide development direction and to prepare a new DAP for the next 20 years under its purview. They said the technical management committee had already approved the structure plan which was now waiting for the approval of the inter-ministry steering committee and a 60-day public hearing on it. RAJUK officials said that in the new structure plan, areas of illegal housing projects areas had been earmarked as ‘growth management zones’ to incorporate those into the new DAP. RAJUK town planner Md Sirajul Islam, however, said the project for preparing a new DAP was undertaken to review the existing DAP and remove its flaws. He said they had appointed two local consultancy firms – Development Design Consultancy Ltd and Sheltech Private Ltd – and given them work order in March to prepare the new DAP. The existing DAP was published in the official gazette in June 2010, fifteen years after its preparation started, but its implementation was soon made subject to a final review by a seven-minister committee. The existing structure plan or master plan (1995-2015) for the capital city was supposed to be implemented over an area of 1,528 square kilometres with the DAP. The structure plan is a policy document that serves as the guideline for subsequent local level plans or detailed area plan. Experts said that the government’s compromising stance on enforcing the DAP allowed the housing companies and different government agencies, including RAJUK to earth-fill reserved wetlands and flood flow zones designated in the DAP, to construct illegal housing. They said that RAJUK itself had violated the DAP by undertaking Purbachal New Town and Jhilmil residential projects on the flood flow and agriculture zones. Housing and public works ministry officials said that the seven-member cabinet committee in June, 2014 had brought alterations to the DAP to allow Jalshiri Abashan, a housing of Bangladesh Army in Rupganj, Pratyasha of retired government officials (administration) on the Turag in Tongi, and portions of Bashundhara housing project in Baridhara on the designated flood flow zones. The other projects on flood flow zone, including American International University Bangladesh at Joar-Shahara and University of Information Technology and Sciences at Badda also took advantage of the changes. In June 2011, the High Court declared illegal 77 housing projects, including Pratyasha and portions of Bashundhara project in and on the outskirts of the capital, and asked the government to cancel the housing projects. The cabinet committee in another meeting in August, 2014 gave approval to four housing projects of East West Property Development of Bashundhara Group on 3,400 acres in flood flow zones in Keraniganj and in Savar. Three housing projects of Bangladesh Development Company in Keraniganj, Narayanganj and Tongi, one of Eastern Housing in Savar and Prabashi Palli in Gazipur on designated flood flow zones had also got approval from the cabinet committee. Sarwar Jahan, a professor of urban and regional planning at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, said he feared that the illegal housing on flood plains and wetlands would be further legalised by accommodating those in the new DAP. He said the consequences of such destruction of flood plains and wetlands would be water logging across the capital in future. Planner Al Ameen, who was involved with the preparation of the existing DAP, said that the government had already legalised illegal housing on flood flow zones by official gazettes, so the new DAP could not but accommodate those. Bangladesh Institute of Planners general secretary Akter Mahmud said that a new DAP was a must, as the existing one expired this year, but that did not mean the new DAP should ignore the previous one. He said they feared the government might accommodate in the new DAP all the housing projects constructed in violation of the existing DAP. Syeda Rizwana Hasan, chief executive of Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association, said the government move for a new DAP was an attempt to legalise housing projects on flood plains. She said that not only private housing companies, RAJUK itself, besides the army, had violated the DAP by undertaking housing projects on flood flow and agricultural zones. Rezwana said they had campaigned for implementation of the DAP but got no results as the government favoured the unscrupulous realtors. RAJUK chairman GM Jainal Abedin Bhuiyan told New Age that preparing a new DAP to legalise the violation of another DAP did not happen anywhere in the world. He said they would place the matter in the cabinet committee so that the illegal housing projects were not legalised in the new DAP. News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net