Unfulfilled promise: Payment plan for Park Enclave revised, again

No date has yet been fixed for the scheme’s development.

ISLAMABAD:

For those who believed they would be able to build their dream homes in Park Enclave, one of CDA’s most advertised ventures in 2013, the new year has offered another setback. The civic agency’s promise to develop the “Jewel in the Crown” in the capital’s outskirts remains unfulfilled.

The Capital Development Authority (CDA) on Friday revised the schedule for payment of instalments for plots in the housing scheme for the third time in a row. While a number of investors have wizened up and have either asked for refunds or halted payments, others are still waiting for the agency to follow through on its promise.

One of the reasons for the delay is the diversion of funds from the Park Enclave Development Account. Although the CDA has not committed a new date for the housing scheme’s development, but it has announced a revised plan for the payment of instalments.

Investors can submit the first instalment for their plot by February 28, the second instalment by April 30, the third instalment by June 30, the fourth Instalment by August 31, the fifth instalment by October 31, and the sixth and last instalment by December 31.

Investors had stopped paying the instalments of plots after the CDA failed to initiate developmental work at the site.



Park Enclave was launched in 2011, and CDA was supposed to collect all the instalments by December 2012. The cost of a 500 square yard plot was Rs12 million. CDA had calculated that Rs7.4 billion would be generated in revenue by December 2012, by which time it would be able to develop the housing scheme.

Reliable sources in the Finance Wing of the CDA said the civic agency had so far collected Rs2.7 billion for 613 plots. CDA has already spent around Rs2.5 billion for contingency payments, salaries of employees and other running expenses.

Of the money in the Park Enclave Development Account, some Rs33 million have been refunded to investors, who were no more interested in building a house in the CDA’s “dream housing scheme,” while the remaining Rs2.467 billion were used up for non-developmental expenditure including salaries of employees.

In a CDA board meeting in August 2011, it was decided that 60 per cent of the total proceeds of Park Enclave would be spent on its development, while 40 per cent for contingency payments. But it never happened and city managers have continuously violated the board’s decisions due to paucity of funds.

In September 2011, Rs400 million were withdrawn from the account of Park Enclave, Rs370 million in January 2012, Rs200 million in February and Rs250 million in March. The amount withdrawn from September 2011 to March 2012 was 40 percent of the total amount in the Park Enclave account, said an official.

However, later during another board meeting held in May 2012, the board accorded approval for withdrawing the reserved amount for payment of salaries, ignoring the prescribed limit of 40 per cent as a loan.

CDA Engineering Member Sanaullah Aman said the situation was different this time and it was not just an attempt to rake up money to meet non-developmental expenditures. “The PC-I of Park Enclave is expected to be approved by the CDA-Development Working Party in the coming week, following which the developmental process will be started in full swing.”

He said the CDA chairman was taking interest in the project and hopefully plot owners would get good news in the near future.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 18^th, 2014.