Housing for government employees

Delivering the 2007-08 Budget speech in the National Assembly, Minister of State for Finance Omar Ayub Khan said that the Ministry of Housing and Works would construct 37,000 housing units for low-paid government employees and transfer the units to them on ownership basis.
Work on Phase-1 of 5,000 units will be started immediately, for which land will be provided by CDA at the official rate. The employees will also be extended the facility of house-building loans. He said a low-cost housing scheme involving construction of 250,000 units over the next five years, would also be launched in collaboration with provincial and district governments, for which also HBFC loans will be made available.
This is a happy news for low-income government employees, doubly so because the minister has promised that the work on 5,000 units will be started immediately. The rapidly worsening housing problem in the country is largely the result of lack of a coherent and well-integrated housing policy at the national level, which has in turn spawned a mushroom growth of housing schemes, most of them of dubious authenticity.
Some four years ago the government had announced that affordable housing projects would be started for low and middle-income Police and Excise personnel, and one of the leading bankers had also evinced keen interest in providing funding. But nothing has apparently been done so far to implement the scheme.
The level of frustration among those who were to benefit from the scheme can well be imagined. In fact, mounting housing deficit has become a pressing national problem, with the backlog growing at an estimated rate of 270,000 units a year.
The main cause of the existing housing shortage in Pakistan is the wide gap that exists between the annual need of 570,000 housing units and the construction of only 300,000 units, with the market manipulators, as usual, playing a prominent role in it.
The skyrocketing land prices and the mounting construction costs have made it impossible for a vast majority of Pakistanis to own a house, which has in turn given a windfall to the rent-collecting class.
The growing disparity in supply and demand in the housing sector means that the gap will never be bridged unless the government executes projects on a fast-track basis. The incremental rise in housing deficit, therefore, needs to be addressed on a top priority basis.
The pressure on housing, particularly in the country's urban centres, is as much a result of rapid population growth as of rural-urban migration, that has stretched the existing civic services and infrastructure in urban areas almost to the limit. (According to some projections, Karachi's population will grow to 20.6 million, and Lahore's to 10.8 million by the year 2025).
Further, the low quality of housing and the congested living conditions are other problem areas for the government to tackle. According to a survey, more than half of all housing units in Pakistan consist of just one room, shared by a family of 6.5 people, which provides a measure of the huge dimensions of the problem.
One way out of the dilemma, recommended by some experts, is effecting amendments to the outdated town planning and zoning laws to plug the loopholes that have cropped up in this sector over the years. Some of the steps that need to be taken by the government to relieve pressure on housing in the long-term perspective, include a substantial cut in registration fee and stamp duty and the drawing up of foreclosure laws.
Some experts have even proposed complete mapping of land in Pakistan, aside from the establishment of a national housing bank to fund new construction. Above all, there is a need to minimise the role of land developers and speculators in the country's housing sector.
It is hoped that the low-cost housing scheme for government employees, unveiled in the Budget speech, will be speedily implemented, and will not prove stillborn like the one announced for Police and Excise personnel. In fact all such schemes should be implemented on a fast-track basis.