ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Government has decided to build new model cities with five million residential units for lower and middle-income segments of the society under the Prime Minister’s Housing Program with the help of local and foreign investors.

“We will build new model cities for homeless people under the low-cost housing project,” Mian Mehmood-ur-Rasheed, Punjab Minister for Housing, told Arab News.
The minister said that this is a five-year project and will be completed in different phases in different locations. The “Katchi abadis” will also be regularized under this project.
The government will invite applications from “poor people” by mid-October and location for the “new cities” will be based on the number of applications and demand from different areas, he said.
“This is a revolutionary project and we are doing this because we care for our homeless and lower-income people,” said Rasheed, who is also member of the Prime Minister’s Task Force on Housing.
The federal government announced on Thursday that Prime Minister Imran Khan will formally launch the project in the first half of next month and the process of registration for low-cost housing units will commence soon after the launch.
For the housing project, the government will provide basic infrastructure including land, roads, electricity and other amenities to local and foreign investors to build the residential units, said Iftikhar Durrani, special assistant to the prime minister on media.
“The most important component of the project is land and the government will provide this to investors,” he told Arab News. “The project will help revolutionize our economy and industry, besides creating job opportunities for skilled and non-skilled workers.”
Durrani said the housing project will be launched in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces where Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf has its governments in place. “Once the project sets in motion, we will ask governments in two other provinces (Sindh and Baluchistan) to become part of it,” he said.
He said Prime Minister Khan will announce a comprehensive housing policy next month as “we are still working on it in consultation of different stakeholders.”
On Sept. 10 this year, Khan said that Pakistan is sitting on hundreds of billions of rupees in “dead capital” in the form of state land in rural and urban areas.
According to figures cited by the prime minister, 34,459 kanals (1,743 hectares) of the state-owned land is in rural areas, while 17,035 kanals (861 hectares) is in urban areas. Most of this state land is expected to be utilized for construction of the low-cost residential units.
The estimated housing shortage in Pakistan is up to 10 million units and the deficit continues to grow, particularly in the urban areas, according to a recent World Bank report.
The World Bank says that estimates of annual new demand for housing range between 400,000 and 700,000 units, with only about 100,000 to 350,000 formal units being built annually.
To overcome the housing shortage through the PM’s Housing Scheme, private builders and developers are also upbeat about investing in the project and awaiting announcement of a final policy on it.
“This is a good project. We are in touch with the government and ready to invest in it,” Arif Yousuf Jeeva, chairman of the Association of Builders and Developers of Pakistan, told Arab News.
He said the government would provide all the basic infrastructure including land, roads, water and electricity to the investors and monitor the project through an apex committee to ensure transparency. “This is a unique project and will be a big opportunity for the investors,” he added.