Mohammad Badrul Ahsan :
Getting poor response from the aspirant applicants, Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha (Rajuk) is now considering another time extension of its largest apartment project in Uttara, sources said.
According to them, the mega apartment project of the city developer has now turned out to be a kind of pain in the neck of the capital development authority.
The authority has in the mean time applied for time extension to the ministry although insiders and experts are still in doubt over the success of the project after extension of the new time.
However, officials, applicants and experts in the construction sector blamed much higher prices of the apartments in the present construction market and lack of people’s trust over Rajuk for the poor response.
Some of them apprehended that people who already submitted their applications could take those back as it was witnessed earlier in this flat project. Rakuk takes too much time in executing formalities.
According to an estimate of Rajuk’s estate wing, a total of 1,241 application forms were sold from the five designated banks until May 26 last and only 380 applicants have dropped their forms during the time against over 1,500 out of 6,636 flats in block-A of the project.
From December, 2015, Rajuk invited applications for over 1,500 apartments (1,654 square feet in gross size) out of 6,636 in Block-A as over 5,000 flats will be kept ready for successful applicants who applied earlier.
Then, the city development authority extended the deadline of submitting forms thrice and the latest timeframe expired on May 31, 2016.
When contacted, Rajuk Chairman GM Joynal Abedin Bhuiyan admitted poor response from the targeted groups to the flat project at Sector-18 in Uttara.
“We’ll sit with the officials of the scheme soon and will discuss over the timeline extension,” he said.
Seeking anonymity, a senior Rajuk official said the price fixation committee of the city development authority significantly increased the rate of per square foot space to Tk 4,800 from Tk 3,500, which was fixed by them in 2012 when it first sought applications for the apartments in Block-A.
According to the revised calculation, the value of a 1,654-sqft apartment will now stand at around Tk 8.0 million instead of previous estimation of nearly Tk 5.8 million. “I think it’s one of the key factors that drove away people from the offer,” he said.
He also said the project officials proposed fixing the rate in between Tk 4,000 and Tk 4,200 but the committee went for much higher rate, taking possible surge in prices of construction materials into account.
At the same time, there is no scope for investing unauthorised or black money for those flats. “You will find a very small number to afford such expensive apartments,” he added.
Another official involved with the project said they would propose to Rajuk for giving temporary plot allocation letter to a good number of applicants who have been waiting for long to remove their tension.
Echoing the observations, an applicant said people do not have enough trust on Rajuk’s development activities due to lengthy execution of their works.
“If I am randomly selected for a flat, it will take many years to get my flat ready as we observed in other development projects of Rajuk,” he opined.
The construction activities for developing flats in Block-A remained suspended for nearly two years because of failure and negligence of previous joint venture constructor ENA-DUNGA, forcing the city development authority to scrap the deal with errant joint firms.
Rajuk took up the largest apartment project in Uttara Residential Model Town to build 15,000 flats with modern facilities for a large number of families who don’t have enough money to own living spaces in the densely-populated city where the prices of lands and flats are going up abnormally.
Under the project, the Malaysian government will build a total of 8,400 apartments in Block-B and Block-C under G2G (government-to-government) arrangement while local construction firms will construct 6,636 more apartments in Block-A, according to project profile.
Getting poor response from the aspirant applicants, Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha (Rajuk) is now considering another time extension of its largest apartment project in Uttara, sources said.
According to them, the mega apartment project of the city developer has now turned out to be a kind of pain in the neck of the capital development authority.
The authority has in the mean time applied for time extension to the ministry although insiders and experts are still in doubt over the success of the project after extension of the new time.
However, officials, applicants and experts in the construction sector blamed much higher prices of the apartments in the present construction market and lack of people’s trust over Rajuk for the poor response.
Some of them apprehended that people who already submitted their applications could take those back as it was witnessed earlier in this flat project. Rakuk takes too much time in executing formalities.
According to an estimate of Rajuk’s estate wing, a total of 1,241 application forms were sold from the five designated banks until May 26 last and only 380 applicants have dropped their forms during the time against over 1,500 out of 6,636 flats in block-A of the project.
From December, 2015, Rajuk invited applications for over 1,500 apartments (1,654 square feet in gross size) out of 6,636 in Block-A as over 5,000 flats will be kept ready for successful applicants who applied earlier.
Then, the city development authority extended the deadline of submitting forms thrice and the latest timeframe expired on May 31, 2016.
When contacted, Rajuk Chairman GM Joynal Abedin Bhuiyan admitted poor response from the targeted groups to the flat project at Sector-18 in Uttara.
“We’ll sit with the officials of the scheme soon and will discuss over the timeline extension,” he said.
Seeking anonymity, a senior Rajuk official said the price fixation committee of the city development authority significantly increased the rate of per square foot space to Tk 4,800 from Tk 3,500, which was fixed by them in 2012 when it first sought applications for the apartments in Block-A.
According to the revised calculation, the value of a 1,654-sqft apartment will now stand at around Tk 8.0 million instead of previous estimation of nearly Tk 5.8 million. “I think it’s one of the key factors that drove away people from the offer,” he said.
He also said the project officials proposed fixing the rate in between Tk 4,000 and Tk 4,200 but the committee went for much higher rate, taking possible surge in prices of construction materials into account.
At the same time, there is no scope for investing unauthorised or black money for those flats. “You will find a very small number to afford such expensive apartments,” he added.
Another official involved with the project said they would propose to Rajuk for giving temporary plot allocation letter to a good number of applicants who have been waiting for long to remove their tension.
Echoing the observations, an applicant said people do not have enough trust on Rajuk’s development activities due to lengthy execution of their works.
“If I am randomly selected for a flat, it will take many years to get my flat ready as we observed in other development projects of Rajuk,” he opined.
The construction activities for developing flats in Block-A remained suspended for nearly two years because of failure and negligence of previous joint venture constructor ENA-DUNGA, forcing the city development authority to scrap the deal with errant joint firms.
Rajuk took up the largest apartment project in Uttara Residential Model Town to build 15,000 flats with modern facilities for a large number of families who don’t have enough money to own living spaces in the densely-populated city where the prices of lands and flats are going up abnormally.
Under the project, the Malaysian government will build a total of 8,400 apartments in Block-B and Block-C under G2G (government-to-government) arrangement while local construction firms will construct 6,636 more apartments in Block-A, according to project profile.
