Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha is foot-dragging on inviting applications for allotting approximately 1,200 plots at its Jhilmil residential project in Keraniganj, about five kilometres from the city’s zero point.
It already shifted its tentative and unannounced schedule thrice since January for inviting the applications with pressure mounting on residential facilities for the city’s growing population.
Its credibility is very much on the line as 525 applicants are yet to get their plots Rajuk had allotted at Jhilmil in 2001 and 2002, after acquiring 381.19 acres of land, said Rajuk officials.
The project director said that over 75 per cent of the land development had been completed for 1,000 plots of different sizes in this phase.
The remaining plots, he said, would be ready for handover by the end of the current year.
Set to invite the applications in January, Rajuk shifted the tentative schedule to July and now it expects it would be able to do it in December, as its chairman told reporters from time to time.
Rajuk, its chairman Nurul Huda told New Age in last May, would invite applications in July or August for selling the plots.
The Jhilmil project director, Anwar Hossain, told New Age on Thursday that Rajuk could notr give much attention to the project as it remained busy with other important activities.
Next month, he said, Rajuk would seek the ministry’s approval to the guidelines, it was drafting, for the allotment of plots.
Once the ministry approves the guidelines, he said, Rajuk would, in December, seek applications for the allotment of 1,200, three-katha and five katha plots through computerised lottery.
Rajuk took the initiative in 1997 for establishing the Jhilmil residential project at Suvadda, Chunkatia and Teghria in Keraniganj, five kilometres from the city’s zero point, to ease the capital city’s housing pressure.
Rajuk expects to ready the residential project, revised thrice, by 2012, or 2014, said officials.
Rajuk, he said, acquired 381 acres of land at a cost of Tk 335.73 crore in the first phase.
Rajuk has abandoned its plan to acquire 1,150 acres more for the second phase of Jhilmil residential project after the city’s Detailed Area Plan, known as DAP, identified the area as flood flow zone, said officials.
They said that the DAP prohibits filling up flood flow zones for the development of residential plots or other possible uses.
Since May 1998, Rajuk revised the estimated cost of development of the Jhilmil project thrice.
Initially, it set the cost at Tk 136.17 crore, and the revised cost of Tk 335.73 crore was approved on 27 April, 2005.
The authorities, however, did not approve a proposal Rajuk sent on March 13, 2006, to reset project cost at Tk 360 crore.
But Rajuk recently decided to scale up project cost to about Tk 500 crore, said a Rajuk official, for setting up new components like water treatment plants and using better technology for earth-filling.
Rajuk, said officials, plans to construct and sell 10,000 flats at Jhilmil by 2015.
