Hyderabad’s largest low-cost housing scheme faces inordinate delay

As Hyderabad's largest low-cost housing scheme faces inordinate delay in completion of its development works, Sindh High Court Hyderabad bench on Thursday yet again put the provincial government and Hyderabad Development Authority (HDA) on notice.

The petitioner, Farhan Abbassi, claimed that six notices have been issued so far to the respondents since he filed the petition in 2018.

The court ordered the government and the HDA, which is developing the Gulistan-e-Sarmast housing society with around 33,500 plots in the Kohsar area of Latifabad, to tell the court about progress in the scheme's development.

The petitioner's lawyer, advocate Dilawar Qureshi, apprised the court that despite repeated notices issued by the court little if any progress has been made in terms of the infrastructure development.

The project was launched in 2009 with the objective to provide cheaper plots primarily for residential purposes to the citizens. The petitioner maintained that the allottees who have made complete payments of their plots have still not been given possession of their plots. The residential area still lacked proper water, gas and electric supply.

He told that the HDA signed a memorandum of understanding with Hyderabad Electric Supply Company on August 22, 2021, under which the latter was supposed to establish a grid station in the scheme.

The cost of the project, which was estimated to be around Rs140 million, is to be provided by the HDA. On September 20, 2021, HESCO wrote a letter to the authority asking it to release the funds.

However, five months have passed but the developing authority has not started the transfer of the funds. "… the payment has not been made till date due to which execution work of the electrification of the said scheme has not been started as yet," reads a January 17 letter of the company.

The petitioner told The Express Tribune that he has come to know from some reliable sources that the HDA Director General Muhammad Sohail is planning to launch a new housing scheme on the same Ganjo Takkar mountain range where Sarmast is located. That scheme is planned to be established in 2,800 acres.

"The HDA has miserably failed to complete its Sarmast housing scheme in over 12 years even though it has collected around Rs8 billion from the allottees." He believed that the new scheme is likely to meet the same fate of Sarmast if launched.