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REAL ESTATE

The plight of the developer

Arshi Haider
In the last two decades, the population of Dhaka has grown exponentially.
Since 1991, the city's population grew from 5.8 million to 10 million now. There has been and still is an exodus of people from all over Bangladesh coming into Dhaka, looking for a better livelihood. Accommodating the ever burgeoning population of Dhaka has been an impossible task, given the limited financial resources of our poor country.
As a result, almost half of the population of Dhaka lives in slums today. While the urban population of Dhaka is increasing at 5 percent a year, the slum population of Dhaka is increasing at 10 percent a year.
To meet the insatiable housing demands of this mega city, private real estate developers started taking up housing development projects in the mid eighties. From 1991 to date, it is estimated that these private initiatives have collectively developed no more than 75,000 apartments, which is a mere fraction of the actual needs of the city.
Despite the insignificant progress made with relation to our national dream of “housing for all”, the fact remains that the real estate sector is the largest industry of our national economy. Directly and indirectly, it employs about a million workers and thousands of engineers, architects and other professionals. It is estimated to contribute about 18 percent to gross domestic product and many allied industries, like cement, bricks, sanitary ware, ceramic tiles, steel reinforcement, aluminium extrusion and fabrication, have flourished due to the success of the real estate sector.
Given the above facts, one would assume that the government would recognise this industry as a thrust sector and enact policies for further growth. And one would also assume that the entrepreneurs, who have worked diligently against all odds to develop this sector, would be given some recognition by the society. But we come short on both counts.
While administration has made efforts to create an obstacle course in the path of any real estate development project, the media and society, in general, have made the sector a scapegoat for virtually every urban malice.
If we are suffocating in an unlivable urban nightmare, why blame the developer? The government authorities are responsible for enacting the building codes and ensuring that these are followed.
Let us take Dhanmondi and Gulshan as
examples. These were planned model towns and the original lease deeds for these areas did not permit the plots to be divided and sold. These legal clauses were subsequently modified and hence, we now have the present rules, which permit construction of high-rises. Literally, any number of flats can be built and the land sold in undivided undemarcated shares to flat owners.
Thus, suddenly we have up to 40 families
living on a bigha of land where originally, stood a one or two storied building that housed a single family. The greatest beneficiary of this ill-conceived policy were the landowners who have seen the value of their land increase by up to 100 times in the last two decades.
The fact of the matter however is that the developer is merely a turnkey contractor for the landowner.
In every industry, there are rouge operators. When a fire kills workers in a garment factory or a garment factory building collapses in Savar, do we brand all garment factory owners as “exploiters of the workers"? Or if a particular pharmaceutical industry produces toxic medicine that kills scores of children, do we classify all pharmaceutical factory owners as “murderers”?
Obviously, in the real estate sector too, there are unscrupulous operators. But to brand the entire industry as “land grabbers” or “enemies of the environment” are unfair cliches.
In May, an unfortunate fire in a city residential building took the lives of seven. The probe report found that the fire hoses were not connected to the water reservoirs. It is established that the developer did provide the fire hoses.
So the question arises as to why, having provided the fire hoses and hence having incurred the expense, the developer would not connect the fire hoses to the reservoirs? The project in question was completed and handed over to the owners about five years ago. Could it be that in the mean time, for whatever reason, the inhabitants disconnected the fire hoses from the reservoirs and then did not reconnect?
And even if it is assumed that the developer failed to connect the hoses to the water reservoir, what prevented the inhabitants from carrying out this simple task? Similarly, the probe found that there was no dedicated generator to draw water from the tanks. It is to be noted that there is no requirement, as per the building codes, for the developer to provide a dedicated generator to draw water from the tanks.
The probe also found that the date on the fire extinguishers had expired. This means that the fire extinguishers were actually provided by the developer, but subsequently not maintained or regularly checked by the inhabitants.
And finally, it was found that the fire exit to the roof was kept locked. After five years of occupancy, surely, the developer cannot be held accountable for a locked fire exit.
All the above questions are valid from a logical point of view. But without dwelling on these, the news media condemned the developer and a prominent barrister even went so far as to give the verdict of manslaughter against the developer.
The writer is the managing director of Building Technology and Ideas Ltd.