Islamabad : The three-day International Housing Expo-2022 ended at the Convention Centre here on Saturday with the participants insisting that the event will go a long way towards developing real estate and construction sectors to cater to the country’s current and future housing needs.
The expo, which was held by the housing and works ministry and the Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry in partnership with the Jang Media Group, attracted large crowds of people, especially those on the lookout for real estate and housing investment opportunities, on its all three days, especially weekend. Sessions were held on ‘Sustainable Post Disaster Rehabilitation and Reconstruction’, ‘Urban Planning and Hydrology’ and ‘Smart Growth and Vertical Development: Challenges and Way Forward’.
In a presentation on ‘Towards the resilient recovery’, Raja Rehan Arshad, a former disaster risk management specialist at the World Bank, said hazards were natural but disasters were unnatural, so the natural disaster was a misnomer. “Hazards are geotechnical and hydro-geological in nature and one can’t fight against them, but disasters are manmade, so they can somehow be managed and their impacts can be mitigated or reduced,” he said.
The expert said there was a need for converting adversaries into opportunities so that operational reforms could be introduced with a focus on the mainstreaming of disaster reduction and resilience. He also said instead of legislative reforms and major institutional changes, the disaster recovery phase should focus on the early restoration of the people’s shelter, food and livelihood needs.
Raja Rehan said the resilient disaster recovery exercise required political support, institutional arrangements, detailed damage assessment, financing for full programme, resilient technical designs and training and material hubs. Recovery adviser of the United Nations Office for Project Services Maggie Stephenson said there was a dire need for investing in building professionals by ensuring their better education and training so that they worked differently to plan and develop the future the world needed.
She said disasters were an opportunity to bring about the needed change, so investment should be made in the people to make that happen. Noted architect Shahid Sayeed Khan said the experts, as a solution to the housing issue, should teach the people how to build better houses. Housing secretary Iftikhar Ali Shalwani thanked the local and foreign partners for support and cooperation to hold the expo on the basis of public-private partnership and said the event was the first of its kind in the country.
He called for vertical real estate development and said many countries had addressed the housing issue by encouraging people to build vertically. The secretary said the development of the housing sector would help the economy to grow. The stallholders said they had got a good response from visitors, who not only showed a keen interest in their housing projects but also availed themselves of special discounts on plots, houses, and apartments.
Promising high-quality yet affordable housing to the people, they asked the government to come up with business-friendly rules and policies for the real estate sector to meet the country’s housing needs. The visitors, who belonged to different walks of life, said they consulted stallholders on property buying and building and got really valuable information and guidance.
They said the expo brought the leading builders and developers under one roof providing them with the best housing and investment options, especially in Islamabad and Rawalpindi. ICCI president Ahsan Zafar Bakhtawari gave away shields to the representatives of housing societies, real estate developers and consultants, construction material-related industries, marketing companies and event partners. Popular Punjabi singer Malkoo enthralled the audience with his Bhangra and folk songs.