May 07, 2008	Wednesday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 1, 1429

KARACHI, May 6: Zahida Khatoon doesn’t know what the abbreviation NRO stands for. Neither is she literate enough to understand the meaning of the National Reconciliation Ordinance.

But the widow, in her late 50s, is aware of the fact that ‘it is something’ which exonerated political leaders from all charges of corruption and allowed them not to pay billions of rupees. The same concession she wants for a Rs97,000 House Building Finance Corporation loan to save her home in Sector 6 of Surjani Town.

Otherwise she, like her neighbours, may be forced to leave the house so that it could be auctioned off by the HBFC in an aggressive campaign to recover the defaulted Rs380 million owed by over 4,500 houses in some 10 sectors of the town.

The move may have brought some positive change to the HBFC’s balance-sheet, but it has already made more than 400 poor families homeless over the last few months. In the same period, the government has repeatedly pledged to build 80,000 houses and apartments for labourers.

“We have been asked to pay the dues or vacate home so that they (the HBFC) can sell it,” says Zahida Khatoon, sitting in the corner of a room in her 66-square-yard house, with her right hand behind her back for comfort from an excruciating pain.

The house with two rooms, a washroom and a kitchen will not be her home for long, she fears, as the deadline approaches fast with no hope of help from any quarter, except populist measures, promised by the new political set-up following the Feb 18 polls.

“I have three young daughters and two of them work in a garment factory to run this household. We can’t even pay the monthly instalments. How do they expect us to clear our dues?”

Her logic may not impress the HBFC, which offered a total of Rs140 million loan to some 4,600 families to acquire houses in 10 sectors of Surjani Town under the government programme of low- cost housing mainly for the poor in the early 1980s.

But mired in poverty for generations, over 90 per cent of occupants in the town have defaulted on HBFC loans, which have jumped to Rs380 million with the mark-up. The occupants acquired possession of these houses in 1995.

The corporation offered Rs12,000 on each home after the scheme was launched, which after years of default increased to Rs90,000 to Rs100,000 owed by each occupant. They now look to the new government for help.

“The people of this town can’t manage even two square meals,” says Nazeer Sajid, a former nazim of the town’s union council, who has decided to take up the issue with the highs-ups but has yet to receive a response.

“This (Rs380 million) is just peanuts for the government to provide shelter to 4,600 poor families. This may sound awkward but the question is whether a poor man has no right over the exchequer, which is being plundered and abused only by the feudals, politicians and businessmen?”

He points out that the Shaukat Aziz government wrote off Rs15 billion loans – which included the principal amount of Rs10 billion with Rs5 billion mark-up – outstanding against top guns in the sectors of industry, trade and agriculture during three years of his rule.

The senate came to know last week that the influential borrowers exploited their links within the Aziz government to get their loans written off and the industrial sector was the real beneficiary of this “plunder” of the taxpayers’ money.

Mr Sajid has not been able to persuade the HBFC authorities. Neither has he been lucky enough to inspire the government to do the needful. The HBFC officials concerned avoid commenting on the issue.

They do not even come up with the number of houses sold out so far through auctions and the corporation’s target within the set deadline. However, inhabitants of the suburban town claim that some 450 families have been moved out of their homes when they failed to clear the dues on time. In the days to come, others see the same fate for their homes too.

“We have almost a month left,” says Zahida Khatoon. “Where would we move from here -- it’s unclear. The only thing which has become clear is that we have to leave this home for an auction after a month.”

Experts believe that writing off Rs380 million is likely to affect the HBFC’s plans to overcome its financial crisis and make it a profitable organization. However, they suggest solutions, which include government efforts and political will.

“Obviously, if the HBFC writes off the whole loan, it would set a bad example,” says Tasneem Ahmad Siddiqui, chairman of Saibaan, a non-governmental organization providing shelter to thousands of people.

“But in such a situation the government must intervene and subsidise the loans. It may decide the matter on a case-to-case basis and where it assesses that one really can’t pay the loan, the government should do something for that particular occupant.”

Mr Siddiqi, who once was a member of the HBFC’s board of directors, says the matter was never taken up at the meetings till last year, when he was there.

“The matter is not very serious. It is not unsolvable either. It just needs serious efforts by the quarters concerned with the aim to help poor people and provide shelter to homeless families.”