ISLAMABAD: Balloting for PHA's flats during Ramazan

Pakistan Housing Authority (PHA) will hold balloting for applicants who opted for Islamabad/Rawalpindi city as first preference for allotment of apartments in the low-paid federal government employees' category.

According to official sources, two categories of flats/apartments measuring, 900 and 700 square feet will be constructed for the federal government employees in Sector G-10/2 and G-11/3. Fifteen acre land has been acquired for the project, they added.

They said that a total of 12,000 applicants had opted for Rawalpindi Islamabad and scrutiny of the applications are going on while final balloting will be held during this month. The PHA has received Expression of Interest (EOI) from interested well-reputed national and international firms for development of mega housing schemes of row houses/apartments in and around Islamabad. The PHA had earlier invited forms from low paid federal government employees (BPS 1 to 16) in year 2007-08 to ascertain the choice of city for getting residential accommodation.

The sources said that 90 per cent of quota has been reserved for federal government employees who have 40 years of age and are in the service for the last 10 years while ten per cent quota has been reserved for employees of autonomous bodies/corporation and other federal government organisations. Such housing schemes would also be constructed for officials/officers in order of preference of three cities out of four provincial capitals and federal capital, they added.

The sources said that the PHA has recently been tasked to undertake housing schemes for the officers of Federally Constituted Occupation Groups and for the low paid employees of the federal government.

The federal government employees in the country in general and in the federal capital in particular are facing a lot of problems due to shortage of government houses and there is a dire need to launch mega-housing schemes for them on war footing, they said.
Source: The News, 17/9/2008