Karachi: DHA City applications close amid questions

[Naveed Yaseen]

By Samia Saleem

KARACHI: As applications close this month for the DHA City project in Karachi, questions remain how many of the plots on sale have been allocated to civilians.

DHA officials told The News that the public response to the scheme had been overwhelming but there were questions how many of those applicants, who have given a Rs5,500 non-refundable fee, will actually end up with an allotment.

The scheme runs by the end of August for public applicants and it is expected that there will be a surge of applications in the final days. This will make the DHA richer by millions of rupees as some say that this whole process, in which civilians were invited to apply for DHA plots, is intended more to raise money and less to give civilians a chance to buy land.

After two months of its launch, however, the authorities boast of an unprecedented response by the citizens of Karachi, still some people feel that there are certain shortfalls which the authorities must have taken care of before the announcement of the scheme.

At the time when the project was announced, the master planning of plots had not been started. Now although the DHA made the announcement on August 12 to start the master planning, people are still unaware of a lot of groundwork.

There is ambiguity about the classification and division of the number of plots for each category. As the plots will be given to two classes of people, army personnel and civilians, it has not yet been declared what will be the distribution of plots for each.

And since this is the first venture by the DHA for civilians along with the army, common people are still skeptical, despite the goodwill that the DHA enjoys in the real estate business.

“If for example out of 4,000 plots even 2,000 are kept for the civilians and there are 15,000 applicants what chances will I stand of winning the plot in the ballot,” commented an interested buyer.

On this, Major Shaukat Alvi, Director of DHA City project, commented: “Whatever DHA earns will be spent on the development of the project which is progressing fast. The non-refundable fee that we are charging is far less than what history has seen in the real estate sector here.”

“We have also made the process transparent whereby people can get the forms on the web, while in the past these forms were sold in black at five times higher prices,” he added.

As far as the advancement of the process is concerned, the DHA is a long-term project expanded over a period of 9-10 years but “we have already started preparations for master planning, which includes ground water exploration, topographical survey, geological survey, etc,” commented Major Alvi.

He said after these preparations it would be decided how much plots would be given to civilians and how much to the army.

The DHA has reserved 45 per cent land as the lowest bound for residential purposes in the area, 25pc for roads and the rest for commercial, utilities, recreation and amenity purposes and for greenery. “This planning is being done in accordance with international standards and rules for construction in an area,” he added.

“We have set quotas for every category be it allotment, planning or anything else and all the work is being done very fairly and diligently,” he added.

He also said “while it is the common perception among people and real estate agents that the DHA is charging more for a plot in that area, whatever the DHA is charging includes development charges which have been determined with very less profit by the authorities.”

“Our aim is to provide a state-of-the art and diverse society to all citizens where there is no polarisation and people from all castes and classes can live in unison, as in the case of DHA Karachi and other DHAs of the country.”

He assured that balloting of the plots would be done in a completely fair and honest manner whereby even those who had given services for defence would stand the same chance of getting the plot as the civilians.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=194930