May 19, 2008	Monday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 13, 1429

ISLAMABAD, May 18: The ministry of housing and works has requested the finance division to reconsider its demand for a special allocation in the federal budget for house rent allowance for federal government employees, sources in the housing ministry told Dawn on Sunday.

They said the ministry believed that the payment of the allowance was the only way of solving the problem of providing accommodation to all employees.

The number of federal employees needing accommodation has gone up to 30,000 and the ministry was unable to cope with the situation and, therefore, it wants that most of them should be paid house rent allowance.

The ministry pays 45 per cent of basic salary to employees needing accommodation as the house rent allowance. As the amount they get under the head of house rent allowance is insufficient to rent a house, all government employees prefer government accommodation.

Under a summary sent to the finance ministry by former housing minister Syed Safwanullah, the finance division was requested to pay the allowance as was promised in the housing policy in 1995.

The federal government, under a policy, had stopped the ministry from building houses and decided that house rent allowance should be given to employees with their monthly salaries to enable them to rent houses of their choice.

A senior official of the ministry said that the amount of the proposed allowance was larger than the amount the employees were getting at present.

He said that only one side of the policy had been implemented; construction of houses had been stopped, but the other side, relating to the payment of the house rent allowance, was not addressed. As a result, the housing backlog has swelled and now some 30,000 employees are on the general waiting list for accommodation.

Last year, the government had formed a committee headed by the then finance secretary to look into the matter, but before a solution could be found the secretary was transferred.