Editorial
Ensuring real estate accountability
Law adopted by JS must be followed by implementation
The passage of the real estate-related bill by the Jatiyo Sangsad gives us some hope that the concerns of late expressed about the sector will now be dealt with. It has been a fact over the past many years that the unbridled and unaccountable manner in which real estate developers have gone about building and selling property has left some very critical questions to be answered. Among these have been complaints that in many instances developers have not maintained the terms of the contracts they made with those authorising them to develop their property. At the other end, buyers of flats in a number of apartment complexes have regularly alleged that the amenities promised them by developers have been slow in coming or have not been there at all. Apart from all this, a section of developers has been seen to violate the plans, approved by the authorities, on the basis of which they were supposed to have developed their housing projects.
With the passage of the bill by the JS, one hopes (and with fingers crossed) that a streamlining will now come into real estate development in the country. The various provisions of the bill are surely encouraging in that they provide for legal action against any developer not following procedures and codes regarding real estate activity. Developers found guilty of wrongdoing, that is, failing to maintain the terms and conditions of building property, will now face the penalty of jail terms or monetary fines. An encouraging feature of the bill relates to a registration of development firms, now made mandatory for them. That is a good step, given that in the last two decades developers have come up in mushroom-like manner, to a point where no effort on the part of the government has been effective in checking them. In the process, it is an entire urban landscape that has changed, and not always for the better, through unplanned development dictated by unadulterated monetary interests. The damage done by such unmitigated real estate activity can also be seen these days on the outskirts of the nation's capital. Lush rural regions have been falling captive to lopsided urban concepts of progress.
We are, therefore, happy that the Jatiyo Sangsad has finally come up with the law necessary to keep real estate in check. However, we must also serve the old caveat here that the effectiveness of any law comes through its purposeful application. In the present instance, all the provisions relating to the payment of various fines and going through various terms of imprisonment on the part of developers overstepping the law will be set at nought if the machinery for the implementation of the law is not activated. We, therefore, emphasise the huge need for a constant oversight of real estate activities from here on through an effective mechanism to ensure that the provisions of the just passed bill are followed in letter and spirit.
One last point: there is an urgent need for decisive action against those real estate developers who have in recent years been accused of grabbing land and turning it into a lucrative commercial enterprise for themselves. Such criminality, if ignored, will defeat the purposes of the bill the JS has adopted.
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