Only 20,000 houses for 1,000,00 Govt servants

ISLAMABAD—There are only 20,000 quarters/houses of various categories available in the federal capital for around 1,000,00 federal government employees.
"There is a shortage of approximately 80,000 official accommodation in the capital and majority of the government servants are living in private houses on rents and anxiously waiting for their turn to get official accommodation," Joint Estate Officer Shahid Aleem told APP here on Sunday.
He said that 25,000 people were on the waiting list of Estate Office and anxiously waiting for their turn to get official residences.
Shahid Aleem said that the Estate Office witnessed great rush during the last days of the government as hundreds of applicants were coming daily to get official accommodation in the federal capital.
He said that there were only 1200 vacant houses/quarters while the then Minister for Housing and Works had issued allotment letters to more than 6,000 applicants during the last days in his office.
He said the caretaker Minister for Housing and Works Nisar Mohammad Khan has stopped the allotment process till further order except those who have already been allotted houses.
He said that the issue of getting official accommodation in the federal capital was a herculean task as only allotment of house from the minister was not solution to the problem, adding that the basic issue is shortage of official residences in the capital.
He said that since the construction of official accommodation in Sectors G-10 and I-9 in 1986 no major construction except a few hundreds flats in Sectors I-8 and G-11 had been made whereas the number of government employees have been increased to a manifold during this period.
He said that drastic steps should be taken to overcome the existing housing backlog in the country in general and Islamabad in particular.
The number of Federal Government employees throughout the country stood at 386,000 against 22,000 housing units. The worst sufferers are those living in the federal capital.
The government has announced construction of 250,000 houses for low income employees in the federal and four provincial capitals during the budget but the plan will take a lot of time to materialize.—APP