The Defence Housing Authority (DHA) has acquired over 12500 acre of land on National Highway to develop Defence-II housing scheme besides indulging in value-addition activity of the existing Defence, DHA Administrator, Brigadier Maqsood Hussain said.
In a recent interview about the development plans of the DHA, he said that the price of adjacent land to the proposed Defence-II have already surged by 10 times and would escalate further when the development activity would commence. He said a desalination and power generation plant would be installed at Port Qasim area to ensure water and power supply to Defence II.
"We are trying to locate the land for the plant. It would generate 1175 MW of electricity and 20 million gallons of water. The sweet ground water is also available there but he feared it would not be enough to meet the total demand, so the additional supply would be made through the Cogen power and desalination plant".
The services of world-class developers would be hired for the Defence II. It had to be attractive and safe place for the residents besides being free of all those snags and shortcomings, which had been identified now in Model Plan of Defence.
To a question on investment, he said it was safe in Defence for overseas Pakistanis, as it was free from the land grabbers. "You have to present yourself physically when making a decision about your land and no one can take a decision in your absence" he assured.
He said that DHA for new scheme would opt for land sharing formula with the developers and would ensure that the problems being faced in Defence did not pop-up in Defence-II.
Talking about the Defence, Brigadier Maqsood Hussain said, "We may not be the best locality but surely our response to complaints is much quicker than general housing projects", Brigadier Hussain said. For the development of the Defence phase VIII, which was almost 45 percent of the total of the Defence, he said the basic model had been reviewed to ensure that it was free from all those faults that surfaced in rest of the locality.
He said DHA had decided to change the traffic plan by stopping 97 intersections so that the traffic could be controlled at certain points besides avoiding road accidents.
Under the revised plan, electricity wires would be carried underground for durability and safety from the environmental moisture in the coastal area, introduction of storm drain concept, elevating some of the roads for effective drainage and rain water flow as every road will have a storm/rain drain so that accumulation of water during monsoon could be avoided permanently.
There were storm drains but in the absence of the sewerage, people opened their sewerage in them, converting them into sewerage drains, he explained.
Referring to accumulation of the water in the Schon circle underpass, Brigadier Maqsood Hussain claimed that the project was fault-free and the water accumulation was the reason of failure to provide alternate power supply to keep the water pumping units active in the absence of Karachi Electric Supply Corporation (KESC) power.
He said the first ever desalination plant in Phase VIII would provide 3 million gallons of potable water besides generating 94 MW of power every day. The pre-commissioning activities of DHA Cogen Ltd (DCL) will start by end of this year.
The similar plant from the same company would be installed in Defence-II, he added.
Brigadier Maqsood Hussain elaborating the link of the under developed areas under DHA, he said not only the Phase VIII had been remodelled to make it better for traffic but the same approach would be adopted for the development of Defence-II.
About the approachability of the new scheme, he said the decision to upgrade the Super Highway had already been taken and it would be completed in 3 to 4 years. The improvement of the Highway was underway and northern bypass should be through by the completion of the development work on the Defence-II, he remarked. "I am sure it would take even couple of minutes less to reach airport from Defence-II than going from Defence to Airport", he hoped.
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