PHA tasks CDA to acquire land for 1000 flats for federal govt employees
By Saad Saud

ISLAMABAD—Pakistan Housing Authority (PHA) has tasked the Capital Development Authority to acquire land in the federal capital for 1000 flats to be constructed for low paid federal government employees.
According to official sources, the PHA had invited applications from officials of federal government employees for submission of option forms from August 31 to September 30, 2007 and later the date was extended to October 10, 2007.
“So far scrutiny of a total of 80,000 applications have been completed and hoped that the whole process would be completed during this month,” an official of PHA told APP on Tuesday.
He said that the PHA has recently been tasked to undertake housing schemes for the officers of Federally Constituted Occupation Groups and for the low paid employees of the federal government. These housing units would be constructed for officials/officers in order of preference of three cities out of four provincial capitals and federal capital.
He said that a summery has also been put forwarded to Prime Minister to review price of the land, which has witnessed exorbitant price-hike during the last couple of years.
The official said that a chain of about 37,000 houses for the low-paid FG employees on ownership basis would be built in the Federal Capital. He, however, said that main problem for PHA was acquisition of land in the federal and all four provincial capitals. They said that a similar project is being initiated in Punjab metropolitan for the FG employees from Grade-1 to Grade-16 on ownership basis while such projects would also be initiated in all the four provincial headquarters to meet shortage of housing units for federal government employees. The FG employees would be able to get loans from the House Building Finance Corporation, they added. In the fiscal budget 2007-08, the government had announced construction of 250,000 houses for low income employees in the federal and provincial capitals.