February 10, 2003	Monday	Zul Hijjah 8,1423

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ISLAMABAD, Feb 9: The General Waiting List of Estate Office (EO) has swelled by 58,000 federal government employees, seeking official accommodation, some of the applicants told reporters outside the EO on Saturday.

They asked the government to construct more houses to resolve their problem as a large number of federal government employees were facing difficulties owing to lack of accommodation in the twin cities.

An employee, Mohammad Sharif, claimed that the EO was not following the principles of merit and seniority, and its officials did not entertain their cases without taking bribe.

“We do not want to pay bribe, but we are forced to do it,” he said.

Some other employees urged the housing ministry to keep a check on the EO and direct its officials not to be rude with the applicants.

According to the EO’s record, a total of 125,000 employees are working with different departments of the federal government. However, only 25,000 official residences are available in the capital.

More than 20,000 employees are residing in hired houses, while more than 58,000 are living in rented accommodations.

The government employees told the reporters that they had to pay a minimum amount of Rs25,000 as bribe for allotment of even the smallest quarter.

An official of housing ministry told Dawn that in view of accommodation problems of the federal government employees, the government had started a housing project in Sector G-11/4 with an estimated cost of Rs132 million.

He said the construction work on about 5,000 new houses was also in progress. The construction of about 10 blocks of apartments has been completed, and these flats will be allotted to the employees soon, he added.