DT e-Paper 21 March 2017

News 3
TUESDAY, MARCH 21, 2017
RAB detains 3 with fake passports, visas
• Arifur Rahman Rabbi
Fraudsters have allegedly found a
way for Bangladeshis to obtain two
legal, machine readable passports
as well as a means to sneak into the
Middle East.
Rapid Action Battalion (RAB),
yesterday detained three people
with fake hand-written passports,
visas and air tickets, along with
other tools used for forging official
documents. The information came
out after primary interrogation of
the three.
Speaking at a press briefing at
Karwan Bazaar yesterday afternoon,
RAB 10 Commanding Officer
(CO) Jahangir Hossain Matubbar
said the ‘fraudsters’ were detained
around 10pm on Sunday.
The detained were identified as
Nasibur Rahman, 39, Atikul Islam
Limon, 40, and Abdul Kuddus, 35.
Among the detainees, Atikul Islam
Limon collected fake passports
and visas forged by Nasibur Rahman
at price of about Tk4 thousand.
Limon would then sell them
for up to Tk7 thousand to the clients.
Abdul Kuddus was responsible
for making the fake seals on the
documents.
The CO said it was suspected
that many criminals who were
found to have fled the country
Draft law aims to rein in
unplanned urbanisation
• Shohel Mamun
The Cabinet has approved the draft
of Urban and Regional Plan Act
2017 in a move to stop unplanned
urbanisation.
The draft, if passed into a law, will
prevent land owners across Bangladesh
from building structures as
they please. They will require approval
from the government authorities
concerned before using their
lands for any construction.
The Cabinet approved the draft
in its regular meeting at Bangladesh
Secretariat yesterday, chaired
by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
Speaking to reporters after the
meeting, Cabinet Secretary Mohammad
Shafiul Alam said land
owners, especially in the rural areas,
currently do not require government
approval before building permanent
structures on their lands.
“But under this law, anyone who
tries to procure agricultural land or
moorland for construction, or any
land owner who tries to do so by
changing the category of the land,
will be subject to punishment.”
He said the new law recommended
minimum one year to
maximum five years of imprisonment
and up to Tk50 lakh fine as
punishment.
He also said a high-powered
RAB recovered fake hand-written passports and other documents, and tools for forging official documents, from three
fraudsters. The photo was taken yesterday at the RAB Media Centre at Karwan Bazaar
MAHMUD HOSSAIN OPU
advisory council will be formed
to implement the law around the
country.
The council will consist of 27
members, headed by Housing
and Public Works Minister Engr
Mosharraf Hossain, and will be in
charge of policy-making, he added.
“The draft also recommends
forming an executive body, led by
the housing and public works secretary,
to aid the advisory council,”
he added.
‘Both the bodies
will consist of more
bureaucrats and not
enough experts’
may have used fake passports obtained
from fraudsters like the
detained to make their escape, as
If the law is passed and executed, it
may reduce misuse of land, Shafiul
told reporters.
“It will also establish a coordination
mechanism among the city corporations,
development authorities
like Rajuk, municipalities, upazila
and district councils,” he added.
“The goal of the act is to prevent
unplanned urbanisation. A
new council and an executive body
as well as a department on urban
and regional development will be
formed under the new act,” Housing
and Public Works Secretary Md
Shahid Ullah Khandaker told the
Dhaka Tribune yesterday.
Urban experts have applauded
the draft law.
Iqbal Habib, a prominent architect
and joint secretary of pro-environment
organisation Bangladesh
Poribesh Andolon, said: “Every
year, we lose around 50,000 hectares
of agricultural land or wetlands
because of unplanned urbanisation.
This act will help to
prevent that.”
However, he said the proposed
model for the advisory council as
well as the executive body was not
appropriately formulated.
“Both the bodies will consist of
more bureaucrats and not enough
experts, as per the clauses in the
draft. But the bureaucrats cannot
make decisions without expert input,”
he told the Dhaka Tribune.
But he appreciated the fact that
the new law would ensure coordination
among different government
agencies.
“The government is working
on urbanisation plans at upazila
level. But currently there is no coordination
among upazila administrations,
Urban Development
Directorate and Local Government
Department. That is causing delay
in the planning process,” he said. •
Japanese firm to
consult on urban
building safety
• Asif Showkat Kallol
The government has decided to
appoint the Japanese firm Oriental
Consultants Global as consultants
of the Public Works Ministry’s Urban
Building Safety Project.
Oriental Consultants Global
Company Limited secured first position
among the three firms that
bid for the job, a ministry official
told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday.
The other firms in the bid were
Indian firms EGIS and Ove Arup
and Partners Ltd.
Public Works Ministry’s proposal
on this matter will be placed
in the next cabinet committee on
public purchase meeting.
The official said the Urban
Building Safety Project already began
last year but a consultant was
yet to be appointed as the decisions
were delayed after the Holey Artisan
cafe terror attack.
“It is a good news that Oriental
Consultants Global is back in business
and has participated in the
this tender,” the official said.
The firm will receive Tk106
crore in consulting fees.
According to the proposal, the
tender submission date was extended
by 12 days in 2016 after the
DT
they were cheap and easy to buy on
short notice.
Quoting the detainees, CO Jahangir
said the fraudsters not only
sold passports within Bangladesh,
but also offered their services to
Bangladeshis abroad who had misplaced
their passports.
The fraudulent hand-written
passports were sometimes used
by illegal migrants to obtain legal,
machine-readable passports, the
CO added.
It was unknown how the false
documents were not flagged at immigration,
the CO said.
When asked whether dishonest
passport and immigration officials
may be involved, the CO said:
“They are a big gang, with many
members both here and abroad.
We have been able to find some
of their names, but have not disclosed
them for the purposes of
the investigation.”
Furthermore, the CO revealed
that the fraudsters had an intricate
system to get Bangladeshis into
Middle Eastern countries despite
many of them withholding visas.
People striving to enter such countries
would first enter India with
the fake handwritten Bangladeshi
passports, before obtaining fake
Indian passports to enter the Middle
East. •
Gulshan cafe terror attack. Three
Oriental employees, Hiroshi Tanaka,
Nobuhiro Kurosaki and Hideki
Hashimoto, were killed in that terror
attack.
Six of the seven Japanese killed
in the Gulshan cafe terror strike
were surveyors for Dhaka’s Metrorail
project. They had been working
for Route-1 and Route-5 of the project
of Metrorail project.
The consultancy has two components,
Private Building Safety
and Public Building Safety.
As per the project proposal,
the project aims to strengthen the
building safety in Urban areas by
financing loans for building safety
for private buildings through Participating
Financial Institutions,
and by improving the building safety
for public buildings, and contributing
to improvement of the social
vulnerability in urban areas.
Dhaka and Chittagong are the
major cities of Bangladesh, accounting
for approximately 50% of
the gross domestic product and approximately
15% of the population.
Around 500,000 houses are concentrated
in these two cities, and
70% of those are believed to not
have complied with Bangladesh
National Building Code. •