Housing: a dream shattered

Roti (bread), kapra (clothing) and makaan (housing) are the essential needs of an individual. Having a decent house is a dream every citizen carries. Welfare states following the concept of sustainable goals provide schemes and loans for the realisation of such dreams.

Human resource is now considered as one of the greatest assets of organisations. Being humans and not robots, employees have desires, needs and like others, yearn for all good things of life, therefore organisations take into account various aspects of motivation. Incentives in the form of better salary packages, and fringe benefits such as housing are essential ingredients of motivation acting as a propelling force for efficient work.

With this realisation, various welfare organisations have been set up, such as Fauji Foundation, Army Welfare Trust, Defence Housing Authority, Federal Government Employees Housing Foundation (FGEHF), Pakistan Housing Foundation, National Police Foundation and so on.

Of those, FGEHF had also been established with avowed objectives for providing plots or houses to serving and retired civil servants purportedly under fair and transparent policy. The FGEHF was established as a cell in the Ministry of Housing & Works, and was registered as a guarantee limited company with Securities & Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) under Section 42 of Companies Ordinance 1984, which was later converted into the Federal Government Employees Housing Authority (FGEHA) through an ordinance promulgated on July 12, 2019, by the president. The purpose of the FGEHA was to initiate, launch, sponsor and implement housing schemes for federal government employees on an ownership basis in all major cities of Pakistan to address the provision of shelter to federal government employees and to make and assist each of them to have a house at the time of retirement or earlier.

The mission statement of the FGEHA has also made lofty claims to provide eligible federal government employees with quality affordable housing in major cities of Pakistan in a secure, healthy and decent environment.

Although the FGEHA boasts of allotting 22,642 units to its members from 1989 to 2013 (19,458 plots, 1,595 houses and 1,589 apartments) in Islamabad, Peshawar and Karachi, the situation on ground is different. The performance of the Ministry of Housing and FGEHF, now FGEHA, is far from satisfactory since 2014 till date.

The FGEHF lured in members initially through a membership drive by collecting Rs100,000 as fee, with fanciful promises of allotting plots in schemes in Islamabad. Having kept them on the hook for a considerable period of time, the scheme could not take off. A membership drive was again launched with a cash amount of Rs100,000 as registration. As a matter of principle, the already registered members were required to be accommodated but this suggestion was thrown to the wind. Then again, to accumulate more money, a membership drive was initiated, with a promise to allot a plot on Park Road — a joint scheme along with the Supreme Court Bar Association. The foundation collected around Rs3,000,000 from each member as a first installment but the scheme remained in doldrums due to a long litigation in the Islamabad High Court and Supreme Court of Pakistan. Meanwhile, hopes were given to those members that they would be accommodated in F-12 Islamabad.

With a final judgment of the Apex Court, hopes of the members rekindled but again turned into despair due to the news that possession of land was only to be given to the Supreme Court Bar Association. While the helpless serving and retired employees were left to frustration. On the other hand, to add insult to injury the wily bunch of federal secretaries adorning the saddle of power with the right connections have carved out two plots for themselves in developed sectors, like D-12/2 and that too without turn. Reports further suggest that the secretary housing has approved a summary for a second plot for himself and other blue eyed in a developed sector. This fact has also been truly referred in the judgment authored by Chief Justice Athar Minallah stating therein, “It also shows how summaries are manipulated in order to mislead the Federal Cabinet so as to get favourable decisions”. Being a chairman of the board of FGEHF the federal secretary is in a fiduciary relation and is required to protect the rights of the members. But who cares?

The dream of having a house in Islamabad of one of the employees was shattered in these words: “It is a matter of the year 2014 when I had applied for a plot by depositing Rs31 lakhs. After about seven years, no development towards possession has taken place. Most of the people have retired and many have expired during a lengthy litigation. Justice delayed is justice denied. Retired people have no awareness of their surroundings. May Almighty Allah bless you for such welfare efforts! Another civil servant quipped, “We are children of a lesser god”.

Having said this, will those who are on the helm of affairs not jump the queue and provide a remedy to the wrongs inflicted upon the employees; after all the tag is of ‘insaf’ (justice)? Will transparency and merit hold sway over influence and power?

Published in The Express Tribune, July 7^th, 2021.

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