ISLAMABAD, June 15: Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali has approved a summary moved by the housing ministry to decentralize house hiring facility in order to curb corruption.
This was stated by the federal minister for housing and works, Syed Safwanullah, at a press conference here on Tuesday. He said the summary had been moved to check corruption and relieve estate office from burden.
According to the decision, now all the federal government departments will be able to provide hiring facility directly to their employees. He said now the finance ministry would disburse funds directly to the departments for providing house hiring facility to their employees.
The minister said so far 4.6 per cent government employees were availing hiring facility while 95.4 per cent employees had not been provided the official accommodation. In reply to a question, he said there were thousands of applications, which are pending due to red tape, nepotism and delaying tactics.
He admitted that delaying tactics caused corruption as a result the employees were facing enormous problems in hiring houses. According to the Estate Office (EO), the General Waiting List (GWL) carrying government employees, who had applied for the government accommodation, has swelled to 58,000.
They have been demanding of the government to construct more houses for them in order to resolve their problem as 58,000 employees working with different departments of the federal government were facing severe residential problems due to lack of government accommodation in the twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad.
According to the EO record, a total of 125,000 employees are working with different departments of the federal government. However, only 25,000 government houses are available in the capital.
The record said more than 20,000 employees were residing in hired houses, whereas more than 58,000 have rented out houses. An official of the housing ministry told Dawn that in view of accommodation problem, a housing project had been started in sector G-11/4 by the federal government at an estimated cost of Rs132 million.
According to the economic survey 2003-2004, there are 19.3 million housing units in the country. "About 24.8 million housing units are required for a population 148.7 million. Hence, a shortfall of 5.5 million houses is estimated by the end of June 2004.