RHD mulls changes in land use policy

The agencies concerned are likely to shoulder a major cost of the utility shifting work in any road and highway development project under Roads and Highways Department (RHD).
RHD is considering taking the move for avoiding complication in dealing with faulty shifting plan, cost assessment and payment system.
Sources said the department is working to bring about changes in related policy as it has been facing tremendous problems in completing utility shifting work in almost every development project.
As per the proposed changes, they said, the agencies concerned would not be able to use the lands of roads and highways for setting up any kind of utilities in the future.
Effort has been made to support the government's plan to turn all highways into four-lane and avoid road digging by different agencies.
According to sources, RHD sat with all agencies concerned mainly government agencies several times and informed them about the problems arisen due to placing inaccurate shifting plan and budget.
"In most cases, we find a huge gap between the costs of the first and final plans by an agency. For this, they face huge variation and audit problem during bill payments," said an official.
He said though RHD has so far been paying money for shifting utility to speed up the process of implementation of its development projects, this system rather forces the department to bear extra money. Thus the project also hits snag.
RHD keeps a fund ranging from hundreds of thousands taka to Tk 1.0 billion or more for utility shifting work, depending on the volume of works.
This budget is prepared and handed over to agencies concerned according to submitted plans and budgets as claimed by the agencies as cost of salvage, operation charge, consultancy, monitoring, design supervision etc.
But RHD land management policy 2015 prohibits all agencies from placing any utility plan within the RHD land or right of way of roads and highways without its permission.
Due to lack of supervision and monitoring, RHD gets gas, water, electricity and telephone lines and cables etc of government, non-government agencies and private organisations under the soil almost in all development works.
A RHD official said bitter experience of unplanned and illegal placing of utilities under RHD is Dhaka-Joydevpur Road.
He said BRT project gets one after another lines and cables after every inch of digging but agencies did not know about those lines. There was no mention in the shifting plan.
"We are paying money as compensation for doing nothing wrong. We do not even get any loyalty for using RHD land," said the official, preferring not to be named.
The Ministry of Road Transport and Bridges sat with all government and non-government agencies concerned and autonomous bodies last month with Road Transport and Highways Division Secretary M Nazrul Islam in the chair.
The meeting informed the agencies of RHD's difficulties in carrying out utility shifting work done in time and confusion created due to placing high cost of utility shifting. The meeting also asked the agencies to follow existing RHD land use policy to place any new kind of utility.
As the RHD is not any client, the meeting also informed the agencies that it would not pay anything shown as charge of service, supervision, establishment or monitoring fees etc in the future.
Sources said most of utility shifting work is planned at the initial stage of formulation of development project proposal. So, all agencies concerned place the plans without any study and conducting field level visit or reviewing necessary documents.
Preferring anonymity, another RHD official said RHD's new land use policy is being updated, considering managing land without utility shifting work.
He said utility must be placed even 10 metres after the RHD lands.
A proposal has been made to build a duct at the edge of a road to support placing utility. The official said RHD may build the duct and get rent from respective users.

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