List Dhaka canal grabbers in month

JS body also asks to free rivers in 2 months
A parliamentary committee yesterday gave one more month to the Department of Land Record and Survey to come up with an accurate elaborate list of individuals and organisations who encroached upon 43 canals in the capital.
It also asked the land ministry to complete within the next two months, the task of freeing the rivers in and around the capital from encroachment, and to restore their navigability.
The previous deadline for submitting the list was August 8, which had been set at a committee meeting on July 8 this year.
The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Land also asked the ministry to provide all facilities to the land record department, including arranging modern equipment within a week for proper identification of illegal structures built on different city canals.
“The land record and survey department is having difficulties in identifying the illegal structures on city canals with conventional equipment, so they sought modern equipment for conducting aerial survey,” AKM Mozammel Huq, chairman of the committee told reporters after its meeting in Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban.
“The encroachers are also trying to confuse the department in its work of identifying the illegal structures,” Mozammel, also a ruling Awami League lawmaker, told The Daily Star.
“The committee asked the land ministry to provide all kinds of assistance including arranging modern equipment for the department within the next seven days, so they may carry out the aerial survey for identifying the illegal structures and their owners,” he said.
“We also asked the department to identify the extent of the encroachment in each case,” said the committee chief.
He said it is not being possible for the land ministry alone to demolish the illegal structures as ‘several other issues are related to that’, adding, “Structures like schools, mosques, markets, even Dhaka City Corporation markets, and some government offices are also sitting on those canals.”
“We therefore want to identify the canals, and the persons and organisations who encroached upon those, and then we will submit the list to the prime minister, seeking her cooperation for remedying the situation,” he told the reporters.
“The land record department informed the standing committee about different obstacles they are facing in identifying the illegal structures,” he added.
The committee suggested that the government amends the existing Vested Property Act, keeping the option of settling relevant legal disputes within six months of the passage of a relevant new bill in the parliament.
It also asked the land ministry to submit a detailed working paper on the process of digital land mapping, and on installing a computerised land management system through which any individual will be able to get information on lands on a website.

Courtesy of The Daily Star