Association of Builders and Developers of Pakistan (ABAD) has announced that it will build 5,000 affordable houses in the range between Rs 1.5 million to Rs 2.1 million in Karachi. The ABAD affordable and social housing scheme was launched at 4th ABAD Expo, which was inaugurated by Sindh Assembly Speaker Agha Siraj Durrani along with PPP-led MPA Saeed Ghani, former governor Punjab and PTI senior leader Chaudhry Muhammad Sarwar, Chairman ABAD Mohsin Sheikhani and others at the Expo Center here.
In an exclusive talk with Business Recorder, Chairman ABAD said that the association had privately announced to initially build 5,000 affordable houses in the range between Rs 1.5 million to Rs 2.1 million in Karachi under Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiative. He said that ABAD had planned to build 20,000 affordable houses at four different places in Karachi and added that the association would initially build 5,000 houses.
Replying to a question, he said that although we had requested both federal and provincial governments to allocate land for the project, no request had been materialized so far, hence ABAD has announced to initially build 5,000 affordable houses in Karachi under the consortium of 17 builders.
He said that presently there was a consortium of 17 builders, who were providing their land for this low cost housing project and hoped that after the completion of this pilot project of 5,000 houses, this consortium would be increased to some 50 builders.
Furthermore he said that ABAD had planned to introduce community-living concept in the low cost housing societies where inhabitants would get all basic facilities including mosques, parks, etc under boundary walls. Sheikhani said that these societies would be constructed at Northern Bypass, Super Highway, National Highway and Hawks-bay and added that land at Northern Bypass, and Super Highway had be purchased while the process of purchasing land at other aforesaid places was in progress.
He informed that around 25 per cent of houses (1250 units) of 120 sq-yard would be sold on cash while rest of the 3750 units of same size would be given through balloting on a easy installments, adding that association had signed an MoU with HBFCL to finance 80 per cent of total cost of a unit, which means the purchaser, who would be allotted a unit through balloting, would only pay 0.3 million while the remaining amount would be financed by HBFCL for 20 years installment.
He answered: "We are presently requesting the concerned authorities to provide basic amenities for the project and once construction works will be commenced, the possession of the units will be transferred within three years". Earlier in his speech Sheikhani said that they were expecting to sign 13 to 14 MoU for more than Rs 500 billion investments with international participants and added that an agreement of around Rs 100 billion had been cemented with Canadian company at an inaugural day of exhibition.
Later, Agha Siraj Durrani, Saeed Ghani and former governor Punjab Chaudhry Muhammad Sarwar lauded the efforts of ABAD for organizing this international expo and offered support to the ABAD in order to resolve issues related to construction industry.
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