Dhaka, Feb 2 (IANS) As Bangladesh grapples with rising inflation, acute housing shortages, water stress and steadily deteriorating public services, the Muhammad Yunus-led interim government has approved a plan to construct three new buildings comprising 71 luxury flats for ministers on Minto Road in Dhaka, a report said on Monday.
It added that the project is estimated to cost Bangladeshi Taka (Tk) 786 crore, with an additional Tk 20 crore allocated for furniture and fittings, and each flat —measuring between 8,500 and 9,300 square feet–will include rooftop swimming pools— and will be furnished using public funds.
“This is not merely a questionable budgetary choice. It is a political and moral indictment of an interim administration that speaks the language of reform while reproducing the very model of elite entitlement it claimed to dismantle. The decision fails on four counts: it violates principles of distributive and procedural justice, breaches public trust and symbolic legitimacy, betrays the spirit of July 2024 amid official silence and entrenches authoritarian elite privilege through a hurried pre-election decision,” a report in Bangladesh’s leading newspaper, New Age, detailed.
“Bangladesh is not a wealthy country. It is a lower-middle-income state burdened by deep inequality, climate vulnerability, urban overcrowding and chronically underfunded social services. Millions live in unsafe housing. Schools lack basic resources. Hospitals remain overstretched. Against this backdrop, allocating hundreds of crores of taka to luxury flats for ministers violates the most elementary principle of distributive justice. Public resources are meant to serve essential public needs, particularly those of the least advantaged and not the comfort of political elites,” it mentioned.
According to the report, even if the flats are officially designated as “government residences”, their scale and extravagance make such justification ethically hollow, underscoring the stark divide between modest official accommodation and elite excess.
“Flats of palace-like proportions, fitted with luxury interiors and swimming pools, go far beyond any reasonable functional requirement. Choosing extravagance over necessity reflects not fiscal inevitability but political preference. It exposes what the state values, and here that value is elite comfort over citizen welfare,” it stated.
The report further stressed that the silence of the major political parties expected to form the next government following the February 12 election is particularly concerning.
“No party has raised a principled objection. None has questioned the moral logic of the expenditure or pledged to reverse it. No one has spoken on behalf of citizens being asked to accept austerity while elites enjoy luxury. In a moment that was meant to mark a break with the past, this silence is not neutrality. It is complicity,” it noted.
–IANS
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