The Ministry of Land has said that the news of cancellation of digital land survey is only a rumour spread on social media.
The ministry made the claim in a notice on Monday.
Recently, fake news titled “Digital land survey scrapped after Tk3.36cr used up” was seen spreading online in the form of rumours, said the notice.
Highlighting the actual facts, it said that the “Bangladesh Digital Survey” program was being implemented mainly through two projects with the aim of efficiently conducting the survey across Bangladesh.
One of these is Land Record for surveying land in digital method and Digital Land Survey Management Capacity Building Project (CDP Project) of Survey Department and the other is “Establishment of Digital Land Management System in three city corporations, one municipality and two rural Upazilas through digital land survey project (EDLMS Project).”
According to the notification, it is claimed in the rumour that Tk336 crore have been spent on the CDP project, but in reality, Tk3.69 crore have been spent on cars, office equipment, salary allowances and training of officials and employees.
It was found that against the total project cost of Tk1212.55 crore, Tk3.59 crore has been spent for financial expenditure which means the physical progress has been made .28% at a cost of 0.30% finance.
Experimental survey work has already been completed in Etbaria mouza of Patuakhali under the CDP project.
The ministry also informed that since the beginning of the project, Covid-19 pandemic seriously disrupted the project work.
Besides, the project was included in the “C” category project list for almost one year without any real progress. Fund allocation is available against this project only in the current fiscal year. As the project is proposed to be revised, no physical and financial progress efforts have been made. The new proposal will be made after conducting a study on CDP
The EDLMS project is being implemented by the Ministry of Land with the support of five international organizations with financial and technical support from the South Korean government.The progress of which is more than 24%.
The Bangladesh Digital Land Survey program is currently in full swing, the ministry further added.