ISLAMABAD, July 2: Overseas Pakistanis continue to invest in real estate instead of construction, thus contributing to a mushroom growth of housing societies and fake developers fleecing innocent public while housing problem gets acute.

Informed sources told Dawn here on Saturday that once again—-previously after 9/11 — foreign remittances worth billions of dollars were going into the “plot business” and ironically the government has no proper mechanism to check the mal-practices in this sector.

Consequently, the sources said, housing situation in Pakistan has been deteriorating for the past many years resulting in shortfall of 270,000 housing units annually.

And to address the issue of backlog and to meet the housing shortfall in the next 20 years, the overall housing production, it was estimated, has to be increased by 500,000 housing units annually.

Since the government could not alone provide huge funds required for, sources said, a new framework was likely to be put in place shortly to facilitate financing in the formal private sector and mobilize non-government resources for a market-based housing finance system.

The private sector participation, the sources said, was important to ensure market driven modes for demand and supply of finance for housing. The total housing backlog which stood at 4.3 million units as per 1998 census was now projected to be about 6 million units. The household size is estimated to be 6.6 persons with 3.3 persons occupancy per room. According to 1998 census, the total number of housing units had been estimated to be 19.30 in the country.

The sources said that Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz had directed the recently re-constituted Housing Advisory Board of the Ministry of Housing and Works to advise and recommend legislation for regulating housing societies/companies, etc., to check mal-practices being adopted to fleece the general public and curb land speculation.

The board was also asked to identify and make recommendations to resolve issues hampering housing and construction activities. Also the Board was directed to advise how to improve the implementation and monitoring of National Housing Policy - 2001 about which provinces have certain reservations.

The Board, the sources said, would also assist in formulation of mechanism to attract local and foreign investment in the housing sector and also measure fixed investment in the sector and its employment effect.

The sources said that the prime minister has directed the provincial and local governments to accelerate the process of identifying state and other lands in and around urban and rural settlements for housing development.