ISLAMABAD, March 13: The government, in order to make the accommodation allocation and assessment procedure transparent, has approved a set of new rules, sources said on Wednesday.

Under the new rules, a hiring assessment board would be set up, the Estate Office empowered to file FIRs against illegal occupants and at source deduction made from salaries of government employees in case of non-payment of house rent.

The Accommodation Allocation Rules-2002 was approved at a meeting held at the housing ministry on Wednesday, which was presided over by the housing minister, Abbas Sarfaraz Khan.

The minister said the basic objective of these new rules was to adopt transparent and merit-based allotment and hiring procedures.

“There will be no out of turn allotment,” he said.

Mr Khan was informed that under the AAR-2002, the Estate Office would issue registration cards to those having government houses and seniority would be the basic principle of merit for allotment.

The minister took a serious note of the subletting of government houses and illegal construction in them, and directed the Estate Office to take action against government employees who violated the rules and ignored previous instructions of the housing ministry in this respect.

He directed the Estate Office to send a detailed report to the ministry about the violators.

The estate officer, Moosa Raza Effendi, on the minister’s query, informed the meeting that a number of government employees had removed Kutcha construction and informed the estate department.

However, notices were served on the employees who had sublet their houses.

Earlier, the secretary housing, Mohammad Aslam, briefed the minister regarding new insertion in the accommodation rules, 2002.

The minister appreciated the efforts of the ministry for finalizing new rules and hoped that these would serve the objectives of transparency.

The meeting was also attended by joint secretary, housing, Abdul Ghani Sameen, deputy secretary, Abid Bashir and other officials of the ministry and the Estate Office.