Provinces reluctant to provide land for federal employees housing projects

[Naveed Yaseen]

All the provincial governments have failed to identify lands for initiating housing projects meant for the federal government employees.

An official in the Ministry of Housing and Works told APP that their latest steps to initiate housing projects like ‘Houses for everyone’ in four provincial metropolitans suffered setback due to lack of cooperation on part of provincial governments.

He said the provincial governments were bound to identify and provide land for construction of housing units to facilitate federal government employees but there was nothing solid on the ground.

The lands identified by the certain provincial governments were not ideal due to their location and access, he added.

He said, “Ministry of Housing is currently sitting with crossed fingers and helpless under such stalemate.” He said lack of cooperation might turn the ongoing and upcoming projects unfeasible like the previous ones.

He said the emphasis was laid upon cost-effective projects, which meant that government owned land should be identified and provided by the provinces.

The provision of land would enable the Federal Ministry of Housing to construct cost-effective residential units in accordance with needs of the federal government employees residing in Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar and Quetta.

He clearly ruled out a suggestion regarding purchase of private land by saying that it would add to costs and currently Ministry had not been allocated such kind of funds to be spent on these novel initiatives.

Moreover, the ministry was keen to engage private companies for construction of such housing units on private-public partnership, he added.

He said such project has been successfully launched in Karachi in collaboration with Mayamar construction company.

Currently, there are about 250,000 federal government employees in the federal and four provincial capitals for whom the new housing units would be constructed.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=202846