The New Nation reported how only 50 percent of the development work of Purbachal New Town Project has been completed in the last two decades. Not only has the progress been slow, it has caused the project costs to rise from Tk 33.11 billion to 77.82 billion by this time. As the report shows the project is suffering from lack of coordination among various utility service providers causing repeated cost over-run and time over-run to cause the overall project cost skyrocketing. A nexus of contractors and project implementation officials are reportedly delaying the work to cause the project cost to escalate and benefit from it. Meanwhile, people who got allotment of plots in the township are waiting for handing over of the possession of the plots and many of them have already died over the last 20 years in waiting. Now question arises who are to be blamed and who will bear the additional cost of the project.
As it appears the Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkhya (RAJUK) started the new township project in 1995 in the eastern outskirts of Dhaka city to provide about 26,000 residential plots to aspirants, in addition to 62,000 apartments to make it one of the biggest residential projects with all modern amenities as a self sufficient township. Its main target was to reduce housing pressure on Dhaka city extending it beyond the Balu River as the Uttara township has enlarged on the northern edge of the city.
The report has quoted RAJUK officials as saying half of the project work has so far been completed but electricity supply, water, gas and other utility services are yet to be provided to end the infrastructure building. Meanwhile, most of the time has passed persuading the utility providers. The Power Development Board has recently set up a Power-substation but Titas Gas has only recently agreed to give gas connection. Dhaka Water Supply and Sewerage Authority (DWSSA) is still refusing to provide connections making the coordination issue as the biggest setback to the mega-project. Some RAJUK officials claimed they would be able to hand over plots in some blocks soon, but given the work yet to be done, an end to the suffering of plot receivers is not in sight.
It is no secret that inefficiency and mismanagement of RAJUK authorities and its administrative ministry are to be blamed for the setback. The project is beset with corruption and swindling of fund at almost all level raising question as to why tax-payers money should be misused this way to help contractors and dishonest officials to mint money from manifold increase in project cost. It is blamed for severe lack of accountability and transparency and people believe that its work must be quickly completed to end the bleeding of the public exchequer.
As it appears the Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkhya (RAJUK) started the new township project in 1995 in the eastern outskirts of Dhaka city to provide about 26,000 residential plots to aspirants, in addition to 62,000 apartments to make it one of the biggest residential projects with all modern amenities as a self sufficient township. Its main target was to reduce housing pressure on Dhaka city extending it beyond the Balu River as the Uttara township has enlarged on the northern edge of the city.
The report has quoted RAJUK officials as saying half of the project work has so far been completed but electricity supply, water, gas and other utility services are yet to be provided to end the infrastructure building. Meanwhile, most of the time has passed persuading the utility providers. The Power Development Board has recently set up a Power-substation but Titas Gas has only recently agreed to give gas connection. Dhaka Water Supply and Sewerage Authority (DWSSA) is still refusing to provide connections making the coordination issue as the biggest setback to the mega-project. Some RAJUK officials claimed they would be able to hand over plots in some blocks soon, but given the work yet to be done, an end to the suffering of plot receivers is not in sight.
It is no secret that inefficiency and mismanagement of RAJUK authorities and its administrative ministry are to be blamed for the setback. The project is beset with corruption and swindling of fund at almost all level raising question as to why tax-payers money should be misused this way to help contractors and dishonest officials to mint money from manifold increase in project cost. It is blamed for severe lack of accountability and transparency and people believe that its work must be quickly completed to end the bleeding of the public exchequer.
