KARACHI, April 25: Federation of Gulzar-i-Hijri Cooperative Housing Societies has urged the government to include the 30 year-old housing scheme, Gulzar-i-Hijri, in the poverty- alleviation programme.
Addressing a press conference at the Press Club here on Thursday, the president and secretary of the federation, Ashraf Tar Mohammad and S.M. Jaleel, said that thousands of residential plot holders in Asia’s largest housing scheme, popularly known as “Scheme-33”, are running from pillar to post for the completion of outer development work.
They also urged President General Pervez Musharraf to include this scheme in the proposed Karachi Package.
They alleged that the City Nazim, Naimatullah Khan, has cancelled his meeting appointment with the federation’s delegation for the sixth time, who wanted to apprise him about the grievances of Scheme-33 plot holders.
They said that Scheme-33 has now been transferred to the City Government and its concerned officers want a fresh assessment of the outer development cost.
Jaleel pointed out that the concerned officials said that they do not have funds to complete the development work. They are maintaining that since the scheme is based on self-financing, the entire escalated cost will have to be recovered from the allottees.
Jaleel said that most of the societies paid their dues a long time ago and they cannot ask their members to again pay the escalated cost.
He was of the view that the defaulters in this scheme, most of them belonging to private builders, should pay the difference of cost.
At least 100,000 families who have their plots in 123 housing societies of KDA Scheme 33 (Gulzar-i-Hijri) could not build their houses as the construction of major roads and laying of sewerage and water supply pipelines has been delayed for long by the concerned agency.
About 75,000 allottees who paid their share of the outer development charges and cost of land some 20 years ago are highly frustrated and hope that someone at the top intervenes and rescue them.
Tar Mohammad said that 9,185 acres of land, out of 26,026 acres of total land in Scheme-33, has been allotted for residential purposes.
The societies have paid Rs517.237 million to the BoR, while Rs669.105 million are still outstanding. The BoR should collect these dues from defaulters, as well as meet the shortfall of outer development work through an open auction of 1,400 acres of corridor land on either side of the Super Highway.
According to the revised estimates of outer development charges in 1997, the total outstanding amount is Rs5.388 billion, which includes a heavy receivable against private builders and individuals who obtained land at throwaway prices when previous governments were in power.
The estimated cost of balance of outer development work is Rs4.8 billion.
He demanded the revision of PC-1 of outer development work to ascertain the actual cost of land and outer development work on an immediate basis.—APP