The allegation that railway staffers were collaborating with railway property grabbers is not a new one and the authorities hardly admit such practices.
However, on Tuesday, the authorities admitted that the railway employees had been aiding in the illegal occupation of Bangladesh Railway (BR) land. The employees have been erecting illegal structures on the occupied railway land and renting those out to tenants for money.
The railway quarters had turned into a “stable” since the railway employees’ were building unapproved structures on the land adjacent to their assigned quarters and were competing for tenants to occupy these structures, Tafazzal Hossain, the railway director general (DG), said at a meeting of the parliamentary standing committee on railways.
While discussing the extent of the illegal occupation, the director general expressed his department’s helplessness to remove the unapproved and makeshift houses due to their strong connections with politicians and MPs.
He said the BR would not succeed in clearing out the unwanted structures unless the MPs and the ministers backed the authorities.
“The railway colony in Shahjahanpur (Dhaka) was one of the most beautiful residential areas in Dhaka. But now you will not rate it as a liveable place; it has turned into a living place for cattle. The employees, who received allotments of 200-square-foot quarters, occupy 800 to 1,000 square feet of the land adjoining their houses and beyond,” Tafazzal told the meeting when the MPs asked him about the involvement of BR staffers in helping the people to grab railway land.
They make small compartments on the land and rent it out to outsiders, he explained.
“They earn much larger amounts than their monthly salaries from the rent. When we proceed to evict them, they turn to the local MPs and politicians and receive support from them,” said the director general in the presence of the Minister for Railways, Mazibul Haque, who is also a member of the 10-member watchdog body.
At the railway DG’s office, there were some employees who allegedly maintained strong political connections with very influential leaders of both the Awami League and the BNP.
“They even threaten us if we try to transfer them,” he said.
Tafazzal Hossain told the Dhaka Tribune that he said this in the meeting at the parliament building.
He told the meeting that BR authorities had proof of the involvement of many BR officials in aiding the illegal occupation of land in different parts of the country.
“They will not get support from the minister or from me. We can assure you that no one will interfere in your move to clear off the structures. If anyone obstructs your work, then tell them to talk to me or to the minister,” ABM Fazle Karim Chowdhury, the standing committee chairman, told the DG in the presence of the Dhaka Tribune reporter.
“We will evict them very soon,” Tafazzal assured the chairman.
The standing committee then recommended the eviction of all the illegal land occupiers and the transferring of the employees who had occupied land.
The documents presented at the watchdog meeting show that BR held more than 61,605 acres of land across the country, of which over 13,000 acres had been leased out. A huge portion of the land was under illegal occupation.
BR’s land survey project in limbo
In June 2007, the BR assigned a private firm to implement the “Land Survey and Preparation of Land Use Plan of Railway Land in Bangladesh,” aimed at preparing a report to show the state of railway properties across the country. The survey report would also find out how much of the land was illegally occupied.
The project was supposed to be finished by June 2009. But despite seven time extensions, the project had achieved an implementation level of just 68% as of June 2014.
Tafazzal told the meeting that the survey company had been given a deadline to finish the project by December this year.
