KARACHI, Sept 14: Federal Minister for Housing and Works Syed Safwanullah said that all the provincial governments had been asked to identify 100-acre land for low-cost housing projects to accommodate majority of shelterless population.

Speaking at the national conference on "Housing industry and financing" on Tuesday, he said that laws relating to housing and land were being amended to remove bottlenecks in launching of low-cost housing units in the country.

He said that the government was trying to introduce the concept of large scale system of offering built housing units to people instead of taking advance first and initiating construction at later stage.

Besides, he said, a plan was also under consideration to ban transfer of plots simply on power of attorney in different housing projects in order to arrest the growing prices of plots.

The federal minister pointed out that there were different laws for land in every province, which was another obstacle in housing schemes. He said that legislation was under consideration to synchronize these laws.

He regretted that departments concerned in housing sector were the main cause of hurdles in the way of development. "The departments responsible for initiating these housing projects themselves create immense hardships for people willing to construct houses," he added.

He said that the Karachi Development Authority and the Karachi Building Control Authority, which were supposed to accelerate the pace of work in this sector, were causing hardships for common man to have his own house.

The federal minister said how the people interested in launching housing projects would be willing to go ahead with their plans when the departments concerned act in a way detrimental to the plan.

He deplored that no research had been done by the government or private sector on much talked low-cost housing projects. Emphasizing the need for such research, he called upon builders, developers, banks and other quarters to guide the government by putting forward concrete suggestions for developing housing sector.

The Managing Director of House Building Finance Corporation, B.H. Qureshi, proposed that ban should be imposed on transfer of plots for five years in housing schemes to control high prices of land.

Giving the details of functions of HBFC, he maintained that the concept of the HBFC was not commercial one but to provide people loans on reasonable interest rates for constructing the house.

"Total investment of HBFC stands at Rs32 billion and has given a relief of Rs1 billion to widows and other deserving persons," he said. He dispelled the impression that department's interest rates was higher and out of affordability of a common person saying that loan was to repay in a period of 25 years with a exemption of first year to pay any instalment to provide them relief for constructing the house.

The former vice-chancellor of Karachi University, Abdul Wahab, stressed for research on low-cost housing units to offer a clear picture how the plan could be driven ahead. He also called for an end what he called land hoarding like commodities and observed that it would help in arresting trend of increasing land prices.

The executive vice-president of the National Bank of Pakistan, Amir Siddiqui, stressed on rural-based employment generation to reduce population influx in urban centres, subsequently minimizing the growing demand of houses in already heavily populated cities. Among others, KBCA's chief controller Brig A.S. Nasir also spoke at the conference. -PPI