Rules are made to break for housing societies

[Lahore_Real_Estate]

ISLAMABAD: Over 30 housing societies located in Zone V of the capital have sold over 100,000 files of plots so far. Most of these housing societies had been involved in over-selling, resultantly people have been robbed of Rs 50 billion but Cooperative Housing Societies Office circle registrar (CR) has not taken any serious notice of this scam.

Sources told Daily Times that the CR is involved in this scam because no society can pop up on its own since they are checked at four stages by departments concerned before development. At every stage, a housing society has to get an approval to enter the next. To launch a society, the first stage includes permission of layout plan for which departments concerned evaluate feasibility of the project.

At the second stage, a society has to take approval of its engineering design so that possibility of technical faults is removed. It is at this stage that suitability of the site for construction of residential, commercial, public and other places is checked as per rules and regulations.

At the third stage, No Objection Certificates (NOCs) are issued to the administration of the society to start development work. At the forth phase, certificates are issued after completion of development work.

The sources said that in most of cases, the CR office had never put a strict check on administration of housing societies due to which people from all over the country were continuously suffering.

In Zone V, Sawan Garden; Ziraj Housing Scheme; Phase II, III, V and VI of Behria Town; Jaddah Town; River Garden; Anchorage Housing; OPF Housing Scheme; Jinnah Garden I and II; Aagosh (merged in DHA); CBR Town; Morgah City; Parliamentarian Enclave; Alhamrah Avenue Housing Scheme; Khayaban e Kashmir; Pak PWD Housing Scheme Lohi Bher; Senate Avenue; Gulshan e Rabia; Tele Town; Gulshan-e-Rehman; Askery Housing; Korang Town; Bankers’ Town; Hamza Town; WWF Labour Colony; National Assembly Housing Scheme; Bankers’ City; Fatima Vila; Awan e Sadr Housing Scheme; Karawal Housing Scheme; Jinnah Town; Airport Employees Cooperative Housing Scheme; Police Foundation and other housing societies are located.

Only few of these housing societies have completely followed the layout plan and engineering design. Most of them did not follow the procedures. Some of these societies have sold files of the plots much more than the land they have.

Sources told Daily Times that to make a housing society, its management had to follow rules and regulation. According to criteria, residential plots should not expand 55 percent of the land; open/green space/parks should not be less than eight percent; roads/streets not less than 26 percent; graveyards not less than two percent; commercial and parking not more then five percent and public buildings like school, mosque, dispensary, hospital, community centre, post office etc not be less than 4 percent in every housing society. It is another thing that most of the housing societies have violated this criteria.

Affectees said that these societies earned billions of rupees by violation of criteria and in this regard CR office allegedly taken its share. They said present CR Malik Din belonged to a middle class family of Khanewal and during his tenure of job, he had allegedly made plenty of money and owned a multiple fuel station. They said he had a house in a posh sector, an apartment in a lavish tower in F-10 and land in federal capital.

Affectees Rajab Shah, Malik Irfan, Muhammad Naeem and others appealed to Chief Justice Iftikhar Choudhry to take a sou moto notice and solve their problem, ordering to return of their money and a strict action against the CR.

Din said that he did not own any property in the city nor he had any money to buy anything. He said he was just a government servant and an honest servant cannot have any property.