Grabbers reportedly selling housing authority's land

Mohammad Ali is the ‘owner’ of a four-story building in Dattapara housing estate in Gazipur's Tongi. He claimed to have bought the house with Tk 1.8 million (18 lakh) recently.

Beyond that Tk 30 to 40,000 more were spent on the ‘land document’ and ‘social development’.

Mohhamad Ali didn’t reveal, from whom he bought the house. However, the original owner of Dattapara housing estate is National Housing Authority (NHA). But, almost all of the estate’s 97 acres of land have already been grabbed.

The illegal occupants there even buy and sell lands by making contracts on stamp papers. They construct buildings there as well. And powerful people of the area work as mediator of those sales. As per the lowest market price or ‘mouza rate’ the value of the entire land area amounts to almost Tk 15 billion (1,500 crore).

Residents of Dattapara housing estate said, no deeds are made while selling the houses in the estate. Instead, a written contract is made on stamp papers. Despite making no deed, people are taking the risk of buying houses in exchange of a large amount of money as the buyers believe NHA would never try to recover those lands and even if they try they won’t succeed.

Mohammad Ullah, secretary of National Housing Authority said to Prothom Alo that there are no such scopes of occupying and selling of the housing lands. If anyone does this, it would be totally illegal. About land being occupied by others he said, due to less manpower, it is tough for them to watch over all the lands.

From housing authority sources it was learnt that those lands in Dattabari of Tongi were acquired in 1962-63 fiscal year in order to form a well-planned housings. Following the country’s liberation under the direction of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, a portion of Dhaka’s rootless and slum-dwelling population were taken there for rehabilitation. During Hussain Muhammad Ershad’s regime, about 700 houses were given to those rehabilitated families; one house per family.

Even after constructing those houses there were more than half of the entire land was left empty. Now, not even a patch of land is left vacant there. However, the housing authority does not have any information on how much of the land is occupied by whom or what are the numbers of rehabilitated and illegal occupants.

According to the latest (2019-20) audit report of Comptroller and Auditor General of Bangladesh (CAG), 1,020 semi-concrete houses and over 300 shops have been built there. Housing authority cannot collect any rent from these constructions. Recommendation to take actions against officials involved has been made in that report. However, no actions have been taken against anyone yet.

During a visit to Dattapara housing estate recently, it was seen that innumerable three or four storied buildings have been constructed there. Monoara Begum has built a four-story house in Dattapara. While talking to Prothom Alo she said the land, she built her house on, belonged to a man named Samsu once.

Another man named Kufur Uddin bought the land from Samsu. Then, Monoara’s family bought it from Kufur Uddin about 10 to12 years back. Monoara said there are ten rooms on her four-story building. She along with her family members resides in six of the rooms and the remaining four have been put on rent.

There is a four-story building of a private school right beside Monoara’s house. Headmaster of the school Helal Uddin told Prothom Alo that he bought the possession of the land with Tk 400,000 from two persons.

Residents admit that no approvals are taken during the constructing these buildings. Local people said, at least a hundred thousand people live in Dattapara housing. The area is better known as Ershadnagar now.

When asked, what plans does the housing authority have regarding those lands, Bijay Kumar Mondal, member (planning design and special project) of the housing authority informed Prothom Alo, they have plans of taking projects to construct multi-story building in that area in order to make better housing arrangements for slum-dwellers and low-income people. After verifying the possibility of that project, it will be decided whether the beneficiaries will get the flats on rent or for long-term installments.

However, local councilor Faruk Ahmed said the residents of Dattapara housing do not want any such projects there. It has been seen in many previous projects of the government, the original residents of the project area are the one, who do not get new allotments. So, no such projects will be allowed in the area, he added.

Apart from Dattapara, almost 3,740 acres of land belonging to housing authority, have been illegally occupied in Dhaka’s Mirpur, Chattogram’s Pahartali, Halishahar, Foroz Shah, Sher Shah and Kaibalyadham.

According to CAG’s audit report, the minimum market-price of these lands is almost Tk 560 billion (56 thousand crore).

Iftekharuzzaman, executive director of Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB), an agency working on corruption prevention, said to Prothom Alo due to negligence of duty the lands of housing authority have been occupied illegally in this way. It has to be probed whether the grabbers have any nexus with those who were responsible for watching over these properties.