Registered cooperative housing societies in Punjab are playing a significant role in providing cheap and high standard housing facilities to their members and till now have provided more than 0.221 million housing units to their members in the province.
This was stated in a meeting of the Association of Cooperative Housing Societies here on Tuesday. It may be added that the Cooperative department of the Punjab government had started registering cooperative housing societies much before partition with Model Cooperative House Building Society in Lahore. Since then, these cooperative housing societies have set up housing schemes in all districts of the province.
According to one survey of the Lahore city the cooperative societies contributed one third of the houses while the other two thirds of houses were built by the government and private sector. A spokesman for Cooperative department told Business Recorder that during FY 2013-14 Punjab government earned Rs 1978 million though Stamp duty and CVT of which Rs 1171 were contributed by the cooperative housing societies.
He said after the registration of a cooperative housing society, the department holds annual election for election of the administrative body of the society, annual general meeting, audit and inspection to protect interests of its members. He said the cooperative societies work on self-help basis and generate their own financial resources whereas in the private sector, the investor invests in housing schemes. It is because of this reason that residential units in the cooperative housing schemes are cheaper than other housing schemes.