Govt to allow people take commercial setups as high as they want: PM

Prime Minister Imran announced on Thursday that the government will allow people to build commercial setups in urban centers as high as they want, as it will help to avert threat to food security.

Addressing an international Housing Conference in Islamabad, the premier said that the nations's food security is threatened from the housing society and that is why they were allowing commercial setups to go as high as they wanted.

The PM further said that due to the housing society spreading all over the country, the arable land is being absorbed by the urban centers. He added that they had discussed this with the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) so that the areas around the airport are not affected by the buildings.

The premier contended that there were many lands in the government sector, hence the current government has attempted to make a land bank. He continued there were land grabbers all over the city, but the capital city was the one which had the most land grabbers.

The premier further said that the government sectors were concealing lands they owned and were hiding it from the government itself. He revealed that land worth Rs500 billion has so far been recovered from the land grabbers. Therefore, he said during the last federal cabinet meeting, they had decided that they will consider it a criminal offence and imprison people hiding the lands they owned.

The prime minister also said that a major housing project will be launched in April to provide five million housing units to the low income segments of the society. He added that this housing scheme will largely be involving the private sector.

PM Khan also announced that the government is making a new ministry which will centralize all institutions working on poverty alleviation. "We will make 500 digital hubs at Tehsil level, where officers will also give direction to women on how to increase their income and get employment," the prime minister added.

On Wednesday, PM Khan launched a Rs 80 billion comprehensive poverty alleviation program called ‘Ehsas’. This program aims to help the vulnerable segments of the society, including the poor, widows, homeless, orphans disabled, undernourished and jobless etc.