Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha has decided to prepare a new detailed area plan for Dhaka keeping in view what the city would be in 2030 whereas the proposed detailed area plan has not as yet been finalised six years inside the beginning of the project. The fourth deadline for putting the city plan into the final shape expired on December 31, 2009 as the draft DAP, being prepared in view of what the city would be in 2015, has been waiting for the approval of the ministry for more than two months.

‘Rajuk has planned to prepare a new DAP keeping in view the Dhaka of 2030 by bringing about changes in the draft DAP and the structure plan,’ the Rajuk chairman, Nurul Huda, told New Age on Saturday. He said the city development authorities could not make the DAP draft flawless as the structure plan, prepared in 1995, contained some flaws and the ongoing DAP had been design on the structure plan. ‘Our aim is to build the city in a planned manner keeping in view the future capital,’ Nurul Huda said. ‘The new DAP project is expected to begin in six months as Rajuk is preparing the development project proposal which will be sent soon to the ministry.’

The Rajuk chairman said consultants would be employed for four zones as was done in the draft detailed area plan. Nurul said the new DAP would be prepared with the application of improved technology. The new project is expected to be completed in two years inside its beginning and Rajuk till then will be enforcing the draft detailed area plan once it is approved, he said. Rajuk officials said the DAP draft, sent to the housing and public works ministry in the middle of November 2009, was now waiting for the approval. ‘Rajuk sent the draft DAP to the ministry for vetting and the publication of a gazette notification by the law ministry,’ the DAP project director, Jahurul Haque, told New Age.

The prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, on January 20 sad in the parliament that the government had plans to build a mega-city by expanding the area of Dhaka to cover 1,528 square kilometres in line with the Dhaka Metropolitan Development Plan prepared in 1995. According to the plan, the boundary of the capital will be expanded up to the River Sitalakhya and the Meghna in the east, the Bangshi in the west, the Dhaleswari in the west and the south and the Gazipur municipality in the north

The DAP project is the third phase and last tier of the Dhaka Metropolitan Development Plan involving a cost of about Tk 25 crore. The master plan of the Dhaka city, the DMDP, was initiated in 1992, completed in 1995 and officially gazetted in 1997. But Rajuk took years to initiate preparation for the detailed area plan and it finally started work in 2004. DAP will give detailed land use plan of the capital with an expanded area of about 590 square kilometres and will give specific outlines of each plot in the area. DAP is aimed at implementing the recommendations in the structure and the urban area plans to control private sector development. DAP will also provide legal support documents to end deviation, alteration, modification, violation or misuse of the land use plan laid out in detailed area plan.

-New Age