Housing sector: HBFCL role in eradicating feudal psyche highlighted

Since independent no scientific study has been made to overcome the shortage of houses in Pakistan. This was stated by former Federal Minister for Housing Safwanullah while inaugurating the House Building Financing Corporation Limited (HBFCL) Customers' Care Call Centre along with Chairman and Chief Executive of HBFCL Zaigham Mahmood Rizvi here on Tuesday.
He said that public and private sector had sketched out a lot of plans for developing society, but they could not provide fruitful results because of the feudal influence. The HBFCL had successfully eradicated feudal psyche in its business activities, besides facilitating low-income sector of the society to purchase houses, he added.
Zaigham Rizvi, speaking next, said that main purpose of establishing a call centre was to extend its circle of activities across the country, besides providing assistance to its customers via phone call.
This call centre would perform as an information-providing centre to facilitate the existing customers of the HBFCL, besides giving information to the people about the corporation's products, investment policies, as well as procedures, he added.
Moreover, the call centre would be divided in two sections, while one section would facilitate the existing customers regarding their accounts status through the centralised HBFCL customers database, the other would provide information about availing of the loan facility to the interested loanee, besides attending to their complaints, he said.
He further said that the HBFCL had a large network of 80 offices across the country, and hoped that it would be expanded to more than 100 cities by the end of current year.
Commencement of this facility would help every loanee to get required information about the HBFCL schemes and its customers would have easy access to get his problem resolved. He said the corporation would start this service initially with five phone lines and expected that the call centre would receive more than 500 calls per day.
Answering to a query, he said that HBFC has made a comprehensive call centre set-up in line with the international standards and hoped that every single call would be entertained.
He said that call centre had been established with Rs 0.4 million and added that HBFCL was facilitating low and middle income groups for constructing, purchasing and renovation of houses, respectively, aimed to be identified as housing bank for low and middle income groups of population.