Sindh allots 100 acres for housing projects

[Naveed Yaseen]

KARACHI: Federal Minister for Housing and Works Rahmatullah Kakar has said that the Sindh government has allotted 100 acres of land in Keamari town at an initial 25 per cent key money to the housing ministry for constructing housing projects.

At the balloting of ‘Prime Minster’s Housing Programme Apartments’ organised by the Federal Government Employees Housing Foundation, Karachi, Kakar said that Pakistan was currently facing a backlog of seven to eight million houses whereas a mere 300,000 to 400,000 houses were actually being constructed annually.

He said that meeting the housing backlog was a major challenge for the government and these housing schemes were an attempt to meet some of the demands for low-cost houses.

Providing details of the new scheme for which the balloting took place, the federal minister informed the audience that the apartment project was built over five acres of land at the Old Sabzi Mandi, Gulshan-e-Iqbal and comprised D-type and E-type apartments.

He expressed that the D-type apartments were constructed over 1,089 sq feet and comprised three bedrooms worth Rs2.4 million whereas the E-type apartments were constructed over 845 sq feet and had two bedrooms worth Rs2 million.

Kakar shared that these apartments were being provided at the subsidised rates of Rs300,000 to Rs500,000 at the total construction cost.

He said that the total number of D- type apartments available were 460 of which 488 applications had been received from the general public and 50 applications from government employees.

Similarly, only 80 apartments were constructed in the E- type category where 77 applications arrived from the general public and 9 applications from government employees.

The federal minister informed that since the government employee applications were less compared to the flats allocated for them, all applications had been favoured and flats allotted to them.

However, since the general public’s applications exceeded the number of flats available after allotting them to government employees, the balloting session had been held to name the successful candidates.

Chairman of the Federal Government Employees Housing Foundation, G M Sikandar said that the institution had been established in 1988 for the benefit of the government employees and especially to deal with housing problems.

He said that currently the foundation was operative in Karachi and Islamabad but new projects were underway in Lahore too with additional schemes in Islamabad being planned.

He further stated that three housing projects had already been launched, namely Phase I, Phase II and Apartments Phase I schemes. He voiced that future projects included a venture in the PECHS locality for Phase III, for which land was being acquired by the government.

The planning of Apartments Phase II was on the completion stage which would consist of 186 flats, he further added.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=161228