The government is unable to provide required housing facilities to the government officials in the federal capital, Business Recorder learnt here on Thursday. The total requirement of houses for eligible employees is more than 65,000 units.
The availability of houses is around 16,458 units. Therefore, the housing deficit is more than 48,542 units. Sources in the Ministry of Housing and Works said that the country is facing a deficit of 7.9 million houses.
"However, the situation in the federal capital is worse where majority of the employees are without housing facility. Residential accommodation has become a major problem for employees in Islamabad as additional demand per year is 4,000 units which is also increasing with the passage of time", they said.
The Cabinet on March 13, 1995 had decided that it would not spend any money on construction of houses for government servants and instead all the employees would be paid rental ceiling and encouraged to build their own houses. Thus direct government investment in housing for government servants was largely stopped, no policy to encourage construction on ownership basis was seriously considered thereafter.
Sources also said the private sector hence remained largely indifferent to constructing houses/apartments in Islamabad for lack of policy focus. Importantly, the schemes of housing taken up by the Ministry of Works were not pursued properly because of slow moving acquisition of land and dispute resolution processes.
Sources said that plots under various ownership schemes proposed by the Housing Foundation for Federal Government Employees in sectors D-12, E-12, G-13 and G-14 could have provided 14,000 residential plots, but sadly the progress is slow. Like in G-14, the issue of relocating the villages has become a problem for the Capital Development Authority (CDA).
Whereas in Sector G-13 about 5,600 plots have so far been developed, but slow conversion to housing, water and sewerage is still a big problem. In Sector F-12, the Housing Foundation abandoned scheme on ownership basis as land is yet to be acquired and developed by the CDA. "Even the land-use ratio is not determined by the Housing Foundation. The CDA advises that in fact acquisition of Sector F-13 and G-12 needs to be taken together, and not individually", said the sources.
In Sector G-10/2 and G-10/3, the work on 1,000 apartments on 15 acres of land acquired and developed by the CDA has yet to start. The redevelopment proposal of replacing old, worn-out 7,000 government housing units in Sector F-6, G-6 and G-7 by building multi-story apartments over valuable government land not pursued seriously. "At least, 25,000 houses potential available in this area with redevelopment", said the sources.
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