June 01, 2008	Sunday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 26, 1429

PESHAWAR, May 31: Property dealers and officials of different government departments in the civil secretariat allegedly remained busy on Saturday in bargaining over plots announced for low-rank employees in the Regi Model Township Scheme.

It was noticed that the employees waiting in long queues in the Benevolent Fund Building for their turn to get the number of their plots through a draw were requested by property dealers to sell the plots to them.

The government has announced 2,302 plots measuring five and 10 marlas for civil secretariat employees. The price of a 5-marla plot has been fixed at Rs200,000 and of 10-marla at Rs4,00,000 for employees from BS-1 to BS-16. The price of a corner plot will be 5 per cent more than other plots.

According to an official source, the last date for submitting the relevant documents was May 27, but the people had not yet received the number of their plot which they had already sold to property dealers.

Many high-rank officials of the civil secretariat, the source said, had deposited down payment (25 per cent of the total price) for those class-4 employees who were unable to even to pay the initial fee of the stamp paper. When asked why they had sold the plots at such cheap rates, some employees said they were in dire need of money because their officers had paid the entire fee for them on the condition that they would get 40-50 per cent share in the amount the plot was sold for.

They said they were unable to feed their children and it was impossible for them to pay for the plots, especially when the prices of daily-use commodities had increased manifold.

One of them spotting some people who seemed very active said they were property dealers who had been after them since the announcement of plots by the government and were trying to persuade them to sell the plots to them on cash payment.

The in-charge concerned, Kamran Shah, was busy in the draw process, but another official criticised the people for selling the plots even before getting the relevant documents.

He said the plots needed to be non-transferable so that the employees could not be exploited by their officers and property dealers.

He called upon the government to probe into the matter and take action against those who forced their subordinates to bargain over the plots.

The official suggested that the government should bind the owners of the plots to sell them only to low-rank employees of the attached departments, instead of selling them to property dealers.