FAISALABAD, Jan 24: The much trumpeted Punjab government scheme for providing 'constructed houses' to government servants received a poor response as only 16.87 per cent employees expressed their willingness for enrolment under the scheme.

The constructed houses for each government servant right from scale I to 20 was launched under the Punjab Government Servants Housing Foundation Act. The government had announced that servants housing colonies would be established in every district to provide constructed houses to them in easy instalments without charging cost of the land.

Sources said that despite a well-organized campaign launched by the PGSHF and delivery of application forms departmentally, only 135,000 employees out of total 800,000 had applied for such houses.

Response of lower grade employees has been extremely poor as only 78,000 submitted the application forms out of 700,000 employees while only 10 per cent employees working in scales 1 to 7 have applied for such houses.

They confirmed that the gazetted officers' response for acquiring such houses was more enthusiastic as out of 67,000 officials, over 50,000 had applied for the same.

Owing to a lukewarm attitude of the government servants, they said the PGSHF had abandoned the idea to construct houses in every district and restricted it only for 10 districts - Lahore, Rawalpindi, Gujranwala, Faisalabad, Sargodha, Multan, Bahawalpur, Dera Ghazi Khan, Sialkot and Sahiwal.

They said that in the remaining districts, only 10 to 150 applications were received leaving no option to the PGSHF but to limit its activities in the 10 major cities of the province.

When contacted, Foundation's managing director Chaudhry Riaz Ahmed admitted that the response for securing constructed houses in the province was against the expectations and planning of the authorities.

However, he said that with the completion of the constructed houses in two major cities - Lahore and Faisalabad, the employees would certainly response positively. He said the housing project in both these cities had been commenced.

He claimed that the housing projects in Lahore Avenue and Faisal Town in Faisalabad would be started in next six months while the allotment process of the houses was also on the card.

He said the project of the constructed houses would be completed in 18 months. The Foundation, he said, would complete the projects by acquiring financial facilities from the Punjab Bank on soft terms.

He said various foreign and scheduled banks had already approached the Foundation to invest in the gigantic housing project and also expressed their willingness to provide credit facilities promptly and on better terms and conditions.

He said that four types of houses would be constructed in the proposed projects - five marla houses would be constructed for scale 1 to 7 employees, seven marla houses for scale 8 to 15 employees, 10 marla houses for scale 16 and 17 employees and one canal houses for scale 18 and above.

The Lahore Avenue housing project was being developed on 1,200 kanals in which 1,450 houses would be built while in Faisalabad the housing scheme would be developed on 2,700 kanals where 3,000 houses would be built.

He pointed out that four preferences for acquiring the houses had been sought from the servants. He said 50 per cent of the employees had applied for getting houses in Lahore followed by 18 per cent in Rawalpindi and remaining 32 per cent had applied for Faisalabad, Gujranwala, Multan, Sargodha, Bahawalpur and Dera Ghazi Khan districts.

The Foundation, he said, had already purchased the land for housing project in Lahore at a cost of Rs370 million and for Faisalabad at a cost of Rs75 million. Hectic efforts were also being made to acquire government land, if feasible, in various districts of the province so as to reduce its overall cost.

He said the Foundation had prepared four designs of each category and the intended applicants would be given right to select any of them. The quality building material would be used in the construction of these houses, he added.