Real estate business suffers loss due to suspension of certain RAJUK services
The suspension of RAJUK’s activities related to approving building construction designs and issuing land-use clearances for three months has placed real estate businesses in Dhaka at financial risk. Investments worth billions of taka have been stalled.
The applications relating to construction and land use that Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha (RAJUK) receives and processes online are managed through software called the Electronic Construction Permitting System (ECPS). Maintenance of this software costs around Tk 50 million annually. On 19 May, after a security vulnerability was detected in the system, all online activities were suspended.
Several RAJUK officials said that at present, nearly 4,500 design approval applications and more than 500 land-use clearance applications are pending. To minimise losses, RAJUK announced that it would partially resume online operations from 21 August. However, since the software is being run under RAJUK’s own management, there is a shortage of skilled personnel and technical capacity for proper maintenance.
Expressing regret over the suspension of services due to the ECPS malfunction, RAJUK Chairman Md Riazul Islam told Prothom Alo on 20 August that they had restarted the work of granting construction permits and land-use clearances with stronger security than before.
However, multiple RAJUK officials and technical experts have stated that to operate such a sensitive and complex system, skilled personnel in database management, server security, and software maintenance are essential. RAJUK does not possess that capacity. This deficiency could expose the service to even greater security risks in the future.
On 22 August, the CEO of a leading real estate company, speaking to Prothom Alo on condition of anonymity, said, “Eight of our projects have been halted as design approval process is suspended. The financial value of these projects is more than Tk 6 billion. As a result, not only is the private sector suffering, but the government is also losing revenue.”
Another developer noted that each project typically involves an investment of around Tk 500 million. On that basis, the thousands of applications stuck at RAJUK represent losses in the billions. He said that during the suspension of services, the demand for construction materials declines, workers lose jobs, and developers face disruptions in bank loans and project planning.
According to RAJUK sources, once an online application is submitted with all required documents, construction approval is typically obtained within 45 days. It may take another 30 days if errors are detected. Because of the suspension of this process, the housing sector has been facing a stalemate.
Meanwhile, officials of the relevant RAJUK department could not provide the total number of building design approvals issued since RAJUK’s establishment. However, RAJUK’s Development Control Division reported that a total of 56,729 applications were submitted between July 2018 and May 2025, and 42,007 buildings were approved. Officials also noted that each month, around 1,000 applications are filed for design approvals and land-use clearances.
The contract with the company Dohatec, which had been responsible for managing RAJUK’s software, expired in June 2024. Their job was to maintain and keep the software operational. After the contract ended, no new company was assigned responsibility. RAJUK also lacks its own IT team capable of maintaining the server and software. Exploiting this negligence and mismanagement, a group managed to obtain design approval for a 15-storey building within just 17 minutes on 19 May. The building was located in the Baunia badh area of Mirpur, a wetland and height-restricted zone, and had previously been denied approval.
RAJUK later claimed that its server had been “hacked.” But the applicant for the 15-storey building had submitted the request by properly paying Tk 154,000 in fees through a credit card. If the server had truly been hacked, this would not have been possible. Sources indicated that the server was not hacked; instead, fraud was carried out using the ID and password of a RAJUK official to obtain approval. Following the incident, police conducted raids in the Motijheel area and arrested three people. Later, RAJUK shut down the application and service system when attempts were made in the same way to approve three more buildings.
Earlier, on 6 December, 2023, about 30,000 documents had disappeared from RAJUK’s server, including applications from 2019 to 2022.
When contacted about the server, RAJUK’s System Analyst, Kazi Mohammad Mahbubul Haque, only said, “The system has been restarted under RAJUK’s own management.”
However, he did not answer questions about how it was running, who was maintaining it, or how secure it was.
A RAJUK source said that although the contract with the private maintenance company expired almost a year ago, RAJUK remained largely silent on the matter. Now, under pressure from real estate developers and service seekers, work has finally begun to select a new company through tendering.
It is mandatory to obtain land-use clearance and construction approval before constructing a building in RAJUK area. This was done manually in the past. In 2016, RAJUK began issuing land-use clearances online on a limited scale. By 2018, the system was expanded across all zones. In May 2019, RAJUK began providing both land-use clearance and construction approval online. Citizens must register on a designated website, submit applications and upload necessary documents. Once the verification and approval are complete, they can download the permits to begin work.
FR Khan, Managing Director of the real estate company Building Technology & Ideas Limited (BTI), told Prothom Alo, “Although RAJUK has an important role in the country’s housing sector and construction industry, the organisation suffers from significant inefficiency. Since it was not possible to submit designs to the ECPS system, all our services were halted.”
Liaquat Ali Bhuiyan, Senior Vice President of the Real Estate and Housing Association of Bangladesh (REHAB), said that due to RAJUK’s technical weaknesses, private real estate developers faced a severe crisis. Ordinary businesses faced financial losses. This not only caused hardship for citizens but also deprived the government of large amounts of revenue.
RAJUK sources said that under the World Bank-financed Urban Resilience Project, RAJUK launched the ECPS in 2023 at a cost of Tk 480 million to approve building designs and land-use clearances online. The main purpose of ECPS was to prevent corruption and harassment in the approval process and ensure transparency. The system was developed by a US-based company called RTI. RAJUK’s contract with a private firm for its maintenance expired in June last year. Since then, RAJUK has not signed a new contract with any other company.
Professor BM Moinul Hossain, Director of the Institute of Information Technology at Dhaka University, told Prothom Alo that it was unacceptable for RAJUK to leave such an expensive software system unsupervised, even for a single day. Yet they left this sensitive system without a responsible firm for a whole year.
Since the government collects revenue through this system in addition to providing services to citizens, the issue of its maintenance must be taken seriously. Everyone involved must be held accountable, he added.