Minister for Housing and Works, Akram Khan Durani on Thursday proposed that the government enhance the house rent allowance for government employees up to 65 per cent during the upcoming federal budget 2015-16.
Addressing a two-day international conference on “Affordable housing and mortgage finance”, he said that the government had increased the house hiring allowance by 35 per cent during last year to provide decent living for low income government employees.
The conference was organised by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) with an aim to improve housing finance in the country and share the knowledge and international best practices of financial sectors, developers and academia for the provision of low cost housing facilities for lower income people in the country.
Reaffirming the government’s commitment to provide housing facilities for lower and middle income people in the country, the minister said that government would provide housing facilities for 500,000 under privileged people in the country by 2018.
All arrangements have been finalised for launching the Prime Minister’s ‘Apna Ghar Scheme’ for lower income group families across the country, he informed while adding that the land for the scheme had also been acquired.
He said that there was a huge gap existing between housing demand and supply where as existing housing units were over burdened. Moreover, per room ratio was 6.7 against 3.4 of the international ratio.
Akram Durani said that increasing urbanisation due to lack of job opportunities, lower facilities of health and education in rural areas were helping increase the housing demand in cities.
“When I had assumed the charge of this ministry there were only 30,000 kanals of land owned by the ministry and now it has reached to 60,000 kanals and we will construct houses on that land for lower income families to tackle the housing demand,” he added.
