A roof of one’s own

Shortage of housing units in urban areas has been an important issue for a long time

The Naya Pakistan Housing scheme aimed at constructing five million houses for low-income segments in the next five years has received an overwhelming public response so far.

According to NADRA, on whose website the application forms are available, it is getting 10,000 hits every second. In just one hour 62,000 forms were downloaded from the website. This shows the alacrity the general public has been showing to this housing scheme — a flagship project of the incumbent PTI government. Shortage of housing units in urban areas, especially for low-income segments of society, has been an important issue for a long time.

This has resulted in mushroom growth of slums in cities. In big cities like Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad hundreds of thousands of people are living in slums, commonly known as ‘kachi bastis’ or shanty towns. In the absence of government-initiated schemes in the housing sector, the private sector has monopoly. Housing societies and real estate is one of the biggest businesses in the country. Except for few, most of the housing societies have failed to deliver what they promised to people.

There are thousands of illegal housing societies, where the general public has invested hundreds of billions of rupees from their hard-earned income. According to a report submitted by the government in the Supreme Court few weeks back, there are more than 6,000 illegal housing societies in the country. This unchecked growth continued over the past three decades.

Transparency should be most important component in the newly-launched project. The government needs to make sure that the maximum number of deserving people is accommodated. Having gigantic scale of the project, the real task will be its fair execution where instead of ‘investors’, genuinely eligible families get roof on their heads.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 12^th, 2018.

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