No more housing on canals in city

The government will not allow any housing project that   encroaches natural canals of the capital, said Housing and Public Works Minister Engineer Mosharraf Hossain Thursday.
He said those, who encroached natural canals by filling earth in the name of housing projects, must remove earth from the canals and submit their project profiles afresh.
He said the government would take steps to reclaim the natural canals in the capital.  
The Minister said this while visiting eastern part of Gulshan-Madani Avenue on the day.
He expressed disappointment seeing the earth filling condition of a private housing project adjacent to the bank of the river Balu.
He said it will be easily possible to detect misdeeds  from the map and reclaim the encroached areas even after these are filled up with earth.
The government will take initiative to bring back the previous state of the river Balu. The low-lying areas adjacent to the river Balu  are now being filled with sands taken from the river Meghna.
If the low-lying areas are filled up by excavating the river Balu, then it will be easily possible to bring back the previous state of the river.
"The rivers surrounding Dhaka are the lifeline of the capital. It is our responsibility to save the rivers," the Housing and Public Works Minister said.
The Rajdhani Unnayan Katripakha (RAJUK) has been constructing 6.18 kilometre long Madani Avenue at a cost of over Tk 4.21 billion since 2010. The construction work of 100 feet wide road from Gulshan to the Balu river will be completed by 2015.
Acting Secretary of the Ministry of Housing and Public Works Md Golam Rabbani, Chairman of the RAJUK Engineer Nurul Huda and Chief Engineer of the organisation engineer Emdadul Haque, among others, were present.