1st phase removal starts Sunday
Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha (Rajuk) will hold from July 24 to August 31 the first phase of a drive to clear residential areas of Uttara, Gulshan, Banani, Baridhara and Dhanmondi in the capital of illegal and commercial establishments.
Three Rajuk teams, along with law enforcing agencies and utility service providers, are ready to demolish and close the illegal structures, including guesthouses, restaurants, hotels and bars, said Rajuk Member (development control) Md Asmaul Hossain.
The drive will also be against illegal structures in car parks, ramps on footpaths and even those running structures on plots not authorised as commercial ones, he said, adding that they were yet to finalise the number of commercial structures present. “We did not send separate notices to owners of illegal structures as we published a notice for the masses in different newspapers,” he said.
On July 17, Housing and Public Works Minister Mosharraf Hossain at a meeting said they had so far identified 1,626 illegal structures in Gulshan, Baridhara, Uttara, Dhanmondi, Lalbagh and Mirpur and would take till January next year if needed to clear the areas.
The cabinet had decided on a six-month timeframe on April 4 to shift the establishments to designated areas. It said non-compliance would result in gas, water and electricity supplies being cut off and cancellation of trade licences.
“We had taken a decision to go slow earlier on humanitarian grounds but now decided to speed up our drive,” he told the meeting of the ministry's departments at its conference room in Bangladesh Secretariat. Educational institutions, clinics and hospitals would be granted more time to move than others, he said. Mosharraf said they already demolished 333 ramps for encroaching on public space and cleared unauthorised establishments from 236 car parks of buildings in Uttara, Gulshan, Baridhara and Dhanmondi.
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