The Punjab Minister for Housing Syed Raza Ali Gilani has said five delegations of investors were reaching from United States, Canada, Mexico, the UAE and Qatar on January 18 for investment in housing sector, and they would sign a number of agreements with the Pakistan government. Delivering his speech at a seminar on "Housing through Private Sector" organised by the Multan Development Authority (MDA) in collaboration with the UNDP and Punjab government under National Urban Poverty Alleviation Programme on Saturday here.
He added those investors would build homes/shelters on 5, 7 and 15 Marla plots for low-income groups and they would charge less than 10 dollars per square feet construction charges while the market had escalated to 14/15 dollars per Sq ft.
The minister said Pakistani developers were not ready to adopt modern technology and they were still employing old and costly technology. The Minister said they would not let anyone to fleece or defraud the general public and they would confiscate the land and plots where homes were not built, and private sector did not provide infrastructure like drinking water, sewerage, electricity, roads and pavements etc.
He said the government would construct 50 percent homes in its housing schemes to attract the other 50 percent to construct their homes for early rehabilitation of shelter-less people.
He said, "We have established a Punjab Housing & Town Planning Authority which would deal with the private sector in developing new housing colonies."
The minister further said that Chief Minister Punjab had sanctioned journalists' colony for each district to provide shelter to homeless journalists.
He further said more than one million homes would be constructed for the employees of grade 1 to 22 in Punjab so that they could heave a sigh of relief after retirement. However, then government employees would not be entitled to draw Rs 50,000 from House Building fund. He said they were aware of that mark-up of House Building Finance Corporation (HBFC) was too much while banks were providing house building loans on 7.5 percent mark-up and the Punjab Government would take up that issue at federal level.
He warned the TMA and development authorities not to delay the approval of home-plan and those must be approved within two weeks otherwise the aggrieved people could submit a petition to him directly and he would take stern action against responsible persons.
The minister said Multan Development Authority had provided only 30,000 plots to the citizens of Multan since 1976 while more than 5 lakh people were still homeless while total population of Multan city was 11,82,441 but there were only 1,62,492 homes, many of them were dilapidated or in dangerous condition.
Earlier, MDA Chairman Mian Faisal Mukhtar, City Nazim Ch Muhammad Tayyab, Town Planning Director Makeen Shahbaz, Town Planning Rawalpindi Director Riaz Akhtar, Manager CDRC Farooq Azam Khan Former Director General MDA Tasneem Ahmed Siddiqui, SKAA Director General and MDA Director General Mumtaz Qureshi also spoke on the occasion.
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