January 20, 2003	Monday	Ziqa'ad 16, 1423

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ISLAMABAD, Jan 19: The Rs5 billion re-development project of Sector G-6, a joint venture of Pakistan Housing Authority (PHA) and Capital Development Authority (CDA), will start from Monday, an official of the housing ministry told Dawn.

According to sources, the project was prepared to provide better accommodation facilities to the government employees, as some 4,000 houses occupied by them were in dilapidated condition.

Under the project, the dilapidated houses in the sector would be replaced by multi-storied apartment buildings. The sources said the government had recently released Rs400 million for installation of gas and electricity connections at the new apartment buildings.

The residents of the sector, mostly retired and serving government servants, have been asked to pay the cost of the flats according to market rate, the sources said.

The re-development plan had been made by a joint committee of the PHA and the CDA in view of a longstanding demand of the sector residents, some of whom had been living in their dilapidated government accommodations for the last 20 years.

The residents had reportedly requested many previous governments to re-develop the sector or give them ownership rights to their official accommodation so that they could renovate their houses on their own.

According to the re-development plan, some 5,500 flats would be constructed in the sector. The number of flats could be increased upto 6,500.

The plan will be implemented phase wise and is likely to be completed within a period of five years, the housing ministry official said.

“At a time, we cannot provide alternative accommodation to all residents of Sector G-6 during re-development, therefore the plan will be completed in 10 phases so that the residents can be provided alternative residences in the same area,” he said.

Answering a question, the official said some 1,500 flats would be constructed by the private sector and the remaining were to be built by the government. “In order to provide incentive, the commercial area of the sector will be given to the private sector,” the official said.

Talking about Wapda’s demand regarding charging of infrastructure charges for providing new connection to the apartments, he said the issue had been settled and now the authority had agreed that it would not charge infrastructure charges from the owners of the flats.

“It was a decision of the federal cabinet that Wapda could not charge infrastructure charges in case of provision of power supply within the urban limits, because such infrastructure already exists in urban areas,” a PHA official said.

Responding to a question, he said the resident of sector G-6 would have to pay meter-installation charges to Wapda for installing new connections and meters at their flats.

He said the work for laying sewerage lines in the sector had been started.