The Rajdhani Unnayon Kartripoakkha (RAJUK) will not allocate any more plots for now, said its chairman, Engineer Riazul Islam.
The RAJUK chairman said this while participating in a city dialogue titled ‘Dhaka, a city of problems: Which way to solve it' at the Dhaka Reporters Unity (DRU) auditorium in the capital on Monday.
The dialogue was organized by the Urban Development Journalist Forum-Bangladesh.
In the dialogue, Riazul Islam said many people called him and asked whether plots would be allocated or not. He said, 'No' allocation. For now, they will not allocate any more plots. They will provide housing for the lower middle class in the places that are available.
The RAJUK chairman commented that people are responsible for the creation of slums in the city. He said, “We are used to working people. How many houses in the developed world have working people? We have brought working people to Dhaka city. We have given the opportunity to create slums. So we should have a plan on how we can do our own work.”
Riazul Islam suggested that Dhaka be brought under a ‘city government’ to solve the problems of Dhaka city.
Sheikh Muhammad Mehedi Ahsan, General Secretary of Bangladesh Institute of Planners (BIP), presented the main article in the dialogue. In the article, he said that medium-term and long-term plans are not taken to solve the problems of Dhaka city. Short-term plans are taken to solve most of the problems of Dhaka. As a result, the plans also end with the change of officials of the responsible institutions, and solutions are not found.
Mehedi Ahsan suggested adopting neighborhood-based projects to solve the problems of Dhaka. Citing the example of a project in Thailand, he said if neighborhood-based development projects are adopted, 50 percent of the problems of Dhaka city can be solved in the next five years.
Bd-pratidin English/Lutful Hoque
