Dhanmondi Lake, owned by Dhaka South City Corporation, DSCC, has been leased to three organisations for the last 18 years. Though the lease ended two years ago, the DSCC did not take any preparation for a new lease, citing complexities.

Meanwhile, the government audit report states that the three organisations owe the government around Tk 20 million though no step has been taken by the city corporation to recover the amount. The previous earnings from the lease have not been deposited to the city corporation fund.

The audit report states that the lease money from the lessor was not recovered on time incurring the city corporation a loss of Tk 1.8 million. The audit was done in June 2017 and the current unpaid amount should be much higher.

As per the report, the Dhanmondi Lake, over an area of 85.60 acres, is being run by three institutes: Monami International, Chilies Monami JB and Dynamic Food Court. Of the three institutions, Monami and Chilies are owned by Kabir Hossain while Dynamic is owned by Mirza Shahrukh Jalil.

The audit report says that since the rent is not being collected regularly, getting the real picture about the debt is becoming difficult.

The lake has car parking, restaurant, sitting plaza, public toilet, skating, children’s park and other facilities and the condition was to use the earning from these facilities for their upkeep. But the lessors have established too many shops and are not paying the city corporation on time.

Admin manager of Monami International and Chilies Monami JB, Jahid Hossain, says: “there are many complications with this, we did not get several things promised to us; the parking area is closed and we did not get the children’s park area.”

We wanted to hand over the lease to the city corporation but the city corporation did not respond; there are many areas here which are occupied by others with political links, said the manager.

“If we cannot recoup the invested money then how will be run the business?”