KARACHI, July 27: The House Building Finance Corporation (HBFC) has approached the provincial governments to provide land in suburbs of major cities for constructing low-cost homes. The country needs to build around 1 to 1.2 million housing units per annum to bridge the gap between demand and supply of homes.
Initially the corporation would take up such housing projects in the suburbs of provincial capitals to cater to the needs of low-income groups. “Once these pilot projects prove to be a success other major cities will also be included in the plan,” HBFC Chairman and Chief Executive Zaigham Mahmood Rizvi told Dawn on Wednesday.
Mr Zaigham said that the corporation had asked the Sindh government to give 100 acres in suburbs of Karachi to initiate a low-cost housing scheme and added that it had also entered into an understanding with Baharia Foundation for the construction of 0.5 million housing units around Lahore and Rawalpindi.
“These schemes are going to be taken up by the HBFC under its bulk financing of housing projects and each unit is being estimated to cost around Rs0.5 million so that its monthly instalment does not exceed Rs1,500,” the HBFC chief said.
Similarly, the corporation would also cater to the needs of middle income group under its “Medium Housing Programme” and the estimated cost of each unit was Rs1.5 to Rs2.5 million, he added.
“We would like to work on these housing schemes on the pattern of the Korangi Township of Karachi which were built under the supervision of Gen Azam Khan and even today are acknowledged as one of the best housing solution to rehabilitate squatters and poor people,” Mr Rizvi asserted.
However, the HBFC has put a condition that all the provincial governments will have to ensure all basic amenities like water, electricity, gas, sewerage, streets and road network as well as municipal services for taking up these housing projects. Furthermore, it will also be the responsibility of the provincial governments to ensure public transport from these towns to the main cities.
Mr Rizvi said that the corporation would also involve NGOs to have their assistance in setting up of schools and basic health services in these housing schemes. Responding to a question, he said that these projects would be built through collection of Zakat and donations from local and international donor agencies and all care would be taken to ensure that cost of each unit did not exceed beyond the limit of low-income group.
There is a possibility that these housing units would be given to squatters and poor people on the concept of “license to live” and no absolute ownership is affected. Such a “license to live”, he said, would be for a period of five years and could be renewable in blocks of five years subject to families’ eligibility for such a support.
The HBFC chief said that this low-cost housing programme had been presented to the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and it had shown its keen interest. As a result of this, he said, a technical team of IFC was coming in the second week of next month to assist the corporation on these projects.
