Falsified test reports have long plagued the mandatory soil-testing system for construction projects, leaving many buildings structurally vulnerable and putting lives at risk, particularly during natural disasters such as earthquakes.
Friday’s powerful quake, which shook the country and left at least 10 people dead and several hundred injured, has once again exposed the consequences of ignoring proper soil tests – a core building-code requirement violated routinely and dangerously in Dhaka.
Experts say weak oversight by Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha (Rajuk), entrenched corruption and political pressure are driving the widespread neglect of proper foundation work across the construction sector.
Under the Bangladesh National Building Code (BNBC) 2020, soil tests must be conducted and certified by qualified geotechnical engineers before any structural design is approved.
Yet a 2018 survey by Rajuk found that nearly two-thirds of the buildings in Dhaka either bypassed soil testing altogether or relied on fabricated reports.
The survey covered 204,106 structures in Dhaka and found that around 66% violated soil-testing rules and other building codes.
In 2025, Rajuk acknowledged that 3,382 buildings currently under construction were already violating rules. Later assessments found non-compliance rising to 95% in certain zones.
Experts say soil testing for building construction is essential to determine the soil’s physical and chemical properties, especially its bearing capacity, to ensure a safe and stable foundation.
Violating the mandatory requirement for soil testing can have severe consequences, including catastrophic structural failure and loss of life.
“In Bangladesh, quality control is so compromised that many firms do not drill properly, do not test in labs and do not maintain borehole logs,” said Mehedi Ahmed Ansary, professor of civil engineering at Buet, speaking to the TIMES of Bangladesh.
Behind these failures is a corrupted soil-testing industry. A legitimate soil investigation – drilling boreholes every five feet, collecting samples and performing laboratory analysis – costs around Tk2.5 lakh.
But Dhaka’s booming informal construction market is awash with fake reports sold for Tk40,000, produced without drilling, without samples and sometimes without engineers at all.
The soil-testing market is officially dominated by licensed geotechnical firms alongside government labs at the Public Works Department, Buet and major engineering universities, but experts say the shadow market of fabricated reports has overwhelmed the legitimate system.
They say the widespread violation of building codes – particularly the mandatory soil-testing requirement – stems largely from Rajuk’s inability to enforce regulations.
“Rajuk has neither the capacity nor the will to verify soil tests nor enforce BNBC standards,” said Mehedi Ahmed Ansary.
Rajuk officials, however, reject the accusation. Md Monirul Haque, the agency’s director for development control, said incomplete soil reports are routinely rejected and argued that only 9%–10% of new buildings lack soil tests, mostly those built without seeking approval.
He added that accredited structural, plumbing and electrical designs must be submitted with every application and that engineers registered with the Bangladesh Professional Engineers Registration Board are not allowed to proceed without soil data.
Stakeholders say Rajuk’s inspections rarely verify the authenticity of soil reports or borehole logs. Instead, they tend to focus on visible violations – unauthorised floors, reduced setbacks and illegal extensions – while the most critical element of construction safety, the foundation, remains largely unexamined.
International development partners have attempted to push for reform, but most initiatives have stalled within the system.
The World Bank-funded Bangladesh Urban Resilience Project (URP), which ran from 2015 to 2024, repeatedly flagged Rajuk’s shortcomings. URP found that poor training on essential equipment, such as truck-mounted Cone Penetration Testing rigs, left Rajuk unable to carry out proper monitoring.
Corruption allegations
Transparency International Bangladesh’s (TIB) 2020 report, “Rajuk: Challenges of Good Governance and the Way Forward,” portrays Rajuk as having shifted from a regulatory body to a profit-driven institution shaped by collusion among corrupt officials, real-estate developers and political patrons.
According to the report, bribery has become routine. Land-use clearance reportedly costs Tk15,000–Tk80,000 for individuals and Tk1 lakh–Tk10 lakh for developers, while building-plan approvals can require Tk50,000–Tk4.5 lakh from individuals and Tk2 lakh–Tk40 lakh from developers.
TIB concluded that “the larger the violation, the larger the bribe,” warning that feasibility studies, environmental impact assessments and soil tests are frequently bypassed altogether.
Huge danger ahead
A June 2024 earthquake-risk assessment supported by the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) warned that a magnitude-7.5 earthquake near Dhaka could kill or injure up to 300,000 people and collapse more than 72,000 buildings.
Dhaka, home to over 2 crore people and projected by the UN’s World Urbanisation Prospects 2025 to approach 3.7 crore inhabitants, remains one of the world’s densest and fastest-growing megacities.
Dhaka has a total of 21 lakh buildings. Of these, 6 lakh are taller than six storeys. Experts warn that these high-rise structures would be at the greatest risk in the event of a major earthquake.
