Cleaning up: Senate urges transparency in housing ministry

Recommends restructuring to promote better monitoring.

ISLAMABAD: The Senate Standing Committee on Housing and Works on Monday directed the Ministry of Housing and Works to introduce a mechanism for ensuring transparency in its affairs.

The committee, which met here with Senator Shahi Syed in the chair, identified a number of irregularities in allotment of plots and residential houses to the federal government employees. It recommended re-structuring of the executive committee of Federal Government Employees Housing Foundation as well the Pakistan Housing Authority (PHA), and evolving a mechanism for monitoring the performance of estate office and housing foundations.

The senator said the bureaucracy was not implementing the recommendations of committee for its own interests. Stressing on the need to follow the constitution, he said no proper mechanism had been devised for allotment of plots to the government employees. He observed that institutions were functioning for the last 20 years without proper laws and policy.

The committee said employees of federal departments, that had not launched their own residential schemes, should be equally entitled for plots. Officials of the Ministry of Housing and Works briefed the committee that the governing body of Housing Foundation was authorised to frame laws for every new phase. They also apprised the committee about the allotment policies of plots in Phase I to Phase V.

The committee observed that the 5% quota reserved in Phase IV for the employees of Supreme Court, High Court, Federal Shariat Court, Election Commission of Pakistan, Senate and National Assembly Secretariat, was insufficient. Federal Minister for Housing and Work, Usman Ibrahim, said steps were being taken to reconstitute the autonomous bodies under the ministry for ensuring merit, openness and fairness in functions.

The Joint Secretary of the Ministry of Housing and Works informed the committee that the allotment of 32 plots to the members of executive committee of Housing Foundation had been cancelled on the directives of the Prime Minister. Those plots were allotted in 2009.

Director General Ministry of House and Works Zafar Abbass told the committee that steps were taken to discourage land mafia as 1,200 applications for plot allotment with the same address had been identified.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 14^th, 2014.

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