Cheap housing: Apna Ghar scheme in cold storage even after two years

Summary of the project pending with the PM for the last eight months

ISLAMABAD: Government officials seem least interested in initiating work on a housing scheme involving the construction of 500,000 houses for low income people as the Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has yet to approve the summary.

Such approval has been pending for the last eight months.

The prime minister announced the scheme – Apna Ghar Housing Society – in November 2013 right after coming into the power but nothing is coming out of the meetings, mapping and follow-up huddles.

The PM office has yet to release Rs500 million for the project. The housing and works ministry has also not purchased a single piece of land anywhere in the country for the project. As per the scheme, the provinces will provide the land free of charge and the government will construct 500,000 housing units at 1,000 places around Pakistan in five years.

The seriousness of the government about the project can be gauged from the fact that the housing society has yet to get a permanent chief executive and related staff to run the programme as another summary for these appointments is pending with the PM for over four months. Currently a joint secretary of the ministry is holding acting charge.

The ministry’s joint secretary and acting head of the project Akhtar Jan Wazir told The Express Tribune that some land had been identified for the project in Jhelum, Gwadar and other areas of Balochistan. “We are following up the matter but waiting for the approval of summary from the PM,” he said.

Last week, in a Senate Standing Committee on Housing and Works, Minister of State Akram Durrani told the members that for the last eight months they were waiting for the approval of summary from PM. Interestingly, in the same meeting the members with consensus set aside objection of an audit report of 2003-2004 about a housing scheme started in 1987.

Déjà vu

According to documents, the then prime minister Muhammad Khan Junejo launched the ‘Apni Basti’ project in 1987 to build 130,000 housing units, but eventually only 35,000 houses were constructed. The scheme could not be implemented due to several flaws, including unrealistic pricing, and unsuitable locations where there was no provision of water, power and gas.

This is not the first time that the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has launched a scheme but procrastinated over it. ‘Mera Ghar’ Scheme – the biggest public sector housing scheme involving an expenditure of billions of rupees – was announced in Nawaz Sharif’s second tenure in 1996 as well but the desired objectives could not be achieved.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 7^th, 2016.