Land Minister Saifuzzaman Chowdhury on Sunday urged the real estate companies to think out of the box to provide affordable housing to people in the cities.
“Bangladesh has been able to boost its economic growth with private sector’s contributions. The government is developing infrastructures of the country. Now a partnership is needed between public and private sectors. You (real estate businessmen) should think how to arrange affordable housing here,” he said.
The minister said this at a seminar on “Challenges of Real Estate in Urbanization and Decentralization” organised by DCCI at a hotelin the capital.
Saifuzzaman said, “We all know Dhaka is a densly-populated city and the government has taken a good number of development projects to make this city worth living. The government is introducing ‘online e-mutation’ system from June this year and the land owners will be able to pay the fees online.”
He also said, the government is planning to go for land-zoning soon, and urged real estate entruprenuers to build satellite towns under public-private partnership.
Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) Mayor Atiqul Islam said now making Dhaka a safe city is a big challenge. “The unplanned city is a curse now for us. We’ve to work togather to resolve Dhaka’s problems. We see many buildings being built in unplanned ways in the cities. We should work in a planned way.”
Mentioning that about 49,000 people are living in per square kilometre in Dhaka, he stressed the need for reducing the pressure on the capital city through building satellite towns outside the mega cities. All the civic facilities should be ensured in rural areas as well to ease the pressure on the capital, he added. Atiqul Islam said, the DNCC is going to launch “Nagorik App”and open 27 playgrounds with modern facilities for mass people in the capital soon.
Real Estate and Housing Association of Bangladesh (Rehab) president Alamgir ShamsulAlamin said a large number ofpeople cometo Dhaka city every day for getting various facilities in absence of those in villages.
“Dhaka alone cannot take this load. So the government should expand these facilities especially health, education, banking and administrative activities to the rural areas,” he said.
He underlined the need for adopting satellite township model in Bangladesh for the development of real estate sector and urged the government to reduce registration fees of apartments and plot sale alongside bringing down bank interest rate for this sector.
