The government has taken a new initiative to build multi-storeyed apartment buildings in the capital to cope with the growing housing demand, officials said.
National housing authority (NHA) under the ministry of housing and public works will implement the apartment project at sector-9 of Mirpur in the capital at a cost of more than Tk 4.56 billion.
Given the fast-growing nature of the metropolitan Dhaka, a secure and well-designed accommodation facility has lately turned out to be a big challenge for the capital's urban planners in a city with a 400-year history mainly because of its increasing population, according to an elderly resident of the city.
Under the special housing initiative, a total of 1320 flats will be constructed in 11 multi-storeyed buildings, each having 15 floors, by applying ICF (Insulated Concrete Form) technology as adopted by 60 countries, including the USA, Canada and Australia.
ICF construction method these days is applied to both low-rise commercial and high-performance residential structures as stringent energy efficiency and natural disaster-resistant building codes are adopted in it.
"We signed an agreement last month with an Indian firm called Ernst and Young, to conduct feasibility study for the project," NHA superintendent engineer AKM Fazlul Kabir said.
He added the apartment buildings would be built on five acres of land through PPP (public-private partnership), and the flats would be handed over to the fortunate applicants chosen through lottery.
He said they have already held a preliminary meeting with the authorities conducting the study in order to make a socio-economic, commercial and technical assessment of the project, outlining the key performing indicators (KPIs).
"Yes, we have taken the project as a pilot one before going for resumption of the satellite town projects," he added.
Housing experts have hailed the move, saying successful execution of the project is quite important to the state-operated NHA in respect to its reputation after its failure to make any visible progress in building three satellite towns around Dhaka even after four years.
According to experts, urbanisation in Bangladesh has witnessed a rapid growth in the recent times. In the last two decades, Dhaka city expanded to around 400 square kilometres from less than 120 square kilometres.
With the economy growing, people in the outlying areas tend to move into cities as they prefer a better living condition with upgraded facilities even in an overpopulated metropolis, which nowadays lacks enough space to accommodate its already saturating population, an expert dealing with urban issues said.
According to official statistics, Dhaka city's population grew to 10 million in the recent years from less than 0.5 million in the early 90s. Many differ with the official statistics and believe the capital city's population is more than 14 million.
Talking about the housing scheme, NHA executive engineer Jahangir Hossain said the estimated cost of the project is over Tk 4.56 billion.
Of the flats, 720 with the size of 915 square feet (sft) will be constructed in six buildings, while 600 flats having the size of 1345 sft will be made in the five remaining buildings, he said.
"Some 100 apartments will be given to the 21st August grenade victims," he said, adding that the flats would have all kinds of modern facilities, which definitely reflect the signs of planned urbanisation in the densely-populated mega city.
Initially, the urbanisation process was carried out in Dhaka in a scattered and unplanned manner, but the situation has started changing over the last 15 years amid 'criticism and protest' by civil society members and environmentalists.
According to the officials concerned, the successful applicant for a flat will have to book the apartment by paying 30 per cent down payment, and the rest (70 per cent) amount will have to be cleared in 360 monthly instalments.
