LAHORE, July 7: The federal government has constituted a committee for evolving a strategy for controlling the menace of bogus housing schemes and a crackdown on the land mafia. The creation of an agency for regular monitoring of housing schemes is also under consideration. The committee, headed by the federal housing minister, comprises provincial housing ministers and secretaries, chairmen of Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan and development authorities of Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi and representatives of cooperative housing societies.

Disclosing this at a departmental meeting held here on Thursday, Provincial Cooperatives Minister Malik Muhammad Anwar said the committee would review the conditions prevailing in the housing sector and formulate proposals for evolving an effective system for checking malpractices in it.

He said the constitution of the committee had been necessitated on receipt of reports that a large number of bogus housing societies were operating in the country not only without registration with the departments concerned but had also been named after different government departments to deprive the people of their hard-earned money on the pretext of solving their housing problems. The fake societies were launching schemes without owning the land and selling far more plots than the total area of their schemes.

Mr Anwar said the provincial government had also started regular monitoring of the housing schemes and had finalized amendments in the Punjab Cooperatives Act 1925 for legislation in the next assembly session.