ISLAMABAD: President Asif Ali Zardari on Friday said that out of box and innovative solutions were to be found to enable the Pakistan Housing Authority (PHA) implement the Prime Minister’s Housing Programme. He urged the need for focussing on providing housing units to the poor and needy in the first place.
He said this during a briefing at the presidency on building houses for the government officials, general public and poor under the PM’s housing programme.The president said housing was a basic human need and the State’s neglect of this important sector had resulted in social unrest and discontent.
He said the provision of “Roti, Kapra Aur Makan” was the basic promise of the party when it was launched and galvanised the people to rally round the person of Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and the Pakistan People’s Party.
“The prime minister had also announced on the floor of the House in March last year a programme for the construction of one million housing facilities in the country,” he said.Briefing the media on the meeting, the Spokesman for the President, Farhatullah Babar, said the president asked for focusing on providing housing units to the poor and needy in the first place.
He said the president had directed that a plan should be devised to provide affordable houses to the middle and lower middle classes through mortgage financing or easy instalment financial plans and to the government employees on the eve of their retirement. He said the house-building activity would revitalise the economic activities, as dozens of downstream industries were directly linked to the housing development.
He said the adoption of public-private model in the housing sector could prove the most beneficial in the development of this sector in the country.Babar said the meeting was informed that in the short-term, 1,000 housing units were being built in Islamabad and the provincial capitals.
In the long-term, 440,000 units in the Punjab; 300,000 in Sindh; 150,000 in the NWFP; 40,000 in Balochistan; 40,000 in the AJK/Northern Areas; and 25,000 units would be built in Islamabad.
The state land in the federal and provincial capitals had been identified and expressions of interest from private land developers had been obtained, and about 30,000 acres of land was identified for the housing development.
In addition, 140 acres of land on the Kuri Road in Islamabad had also been earmarked by the CDA. The president said land acquisition and development by the State was vital for the issue of housing development for the government servants and the poor and needy, and called for devising a viable plan in this regard.
He said another meeting on the subject would be convened after a suitable interval to examine the proposed plans for the land acquisition and development by the State and the mechanism for financing the housing projects.
Those who attended the briefing included Housing Minister Rehmatullah Khan Kakar, Adviser to the Prime Minister on Finance Shaukat Tarin, Secretary General Salman Faruqui, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister Kamal Majidullah, Sindh Minister Jameel Soomro, federal secretaries and senior government officials of the relevant ministries and departments.
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