The government has at last allocated a piece of land in the capital’s Kamrangirchar – that was a channel of the Buriganga River – to RAB 10 six months after the allotment was cancelled to save the environment and the channel itself.
Besides the 2.83 hectares (7 acres) of land given to RAB 10 for its headquarters, the River Police also got 1.21 hectares (3 acres) of land nearby.
Shipping Minister Shajahan Khan, who was part of the six-strong ministerial team tasked with recovering the landlocked channel, yesterday told reporters: “I told the deputy commissioner of Dhaka and chairman of Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority [BIWTA] to fix the land in the former channel of the Buriganga. I told them to fix 7 acres for RAB and 3 acres for the River Police.”
The minister had just finished a meeting with the River Protection Taskforce.
RAB 10 had applied in 2004 for land to establish its headquarters. The Land Ministry approved their proposal in 2005 during the tenure of the BNP-Jamaat government. In 2007, the government handed over the landlocked channel to RAB 10.
On May 26 this year, the government cancelled the allocation.
At that time the shipping minister had said: “We will allot non-government land through acquisition if needed. But we will not give them land demolishing the environment and this is the instruction of the prime minister. Our government is committed to saving environment and recovering the Buriganga channel.”
Asked why he deviated from his earlier decision, Shajahan Khan yesterday said: “We cancelled the land allotted by the Dhaka district administration. Now we allocated them the land as per a directive of the High Court.”
The minister said: “We have decided to allocate the land, which was a channel of the Buriganga, because the land was gobbled up by illegal encroachers.”
