Lahore/Islamabad: The government is in talks with financial institutions to provide interest-free loans for construction of affordable residential units under its flagship Naya Pakistan Housing Programme (NPHP), a news source reported. For government employees, one option is to have them pay instalments through provident fund.
The houses will be offered on a 20-year payment plan where the monthly instalments will be as high as PKR 18,564. The applicants will be required to pay 20% of the total amount as a down payment. Those who own a piece of land will be able to get a bank loan of PKR 600,000.
The government has also constituted a 17-member task force to look into the affairs regarding NPHP. The task force is also holding sessions with banks to have them reserve 5% of their respective loans for the housing project. The construction of affordable houses under NPHP will start in January 2019.
Housing and Works Secretary Dr Imran Zeb said as many as 40 bidders and construction companies had approached the government for providing land and constructing affordable residential units and that the response had been encouraging so far.
Dr Zeb said that efforts were underway to ensure complete transparency in the process of allotment of official accommodation to government employees. He added that the shortfall of housing units across the country had reached 26,724.
In a separate development, Urban Unit of the Punjab Government briefed Housing Minister Mian Mahmood-ur-Rasheed on low-cost sustainable housing schemes across the province.
The presentation included design options, construction details and material choices, identification of cities with acute shortage of housing for poor and types of 3-5-marla houses/apartments for the homeless.
Under the scheme, the provincial government would first build 800 units of three and five marlas in Lodhran, fourteen hundred houses of three marlas in Chishtian, and one thousand homes of three and five marlas in Okara.
