LAHORE:Lahore Development Authority (LDA) Vice-Chairman SM Imran visited the site of LDA City New Pakistan Apartments Project at Mouza Haloki here Friday.
Member Governing Body Engineer Amir Riaz Qureshi, Chief Engineer Abdul Razzaq Chohan, Additional Director General Urban Planning Rana Taka Khan, Project Director Hamad Al Hassan and other officers accompanied him. On the occasion, LDA Vice-Chairman said that provision of five million houses and 10 million jobs was the PM’s vision and LDA City New Pakistan Apartments project would prove to be an important milestone to achieve the PM’s vision.
“I am engaged in practical efforts to create new employment opportunities by promoting the construction industry in the country. We have planned not to rely on government subsidies. This is the first time that the government departments and national banks have decided to co-operate with each other to provide housing facilities to ordinary citizens in Pakistan,” he said. He said this was the first project of its kind for which government resources were not being used. For this important project, we have started working on it after observing the models of different countries in great detail, he maintained.
SM Imran said that complete planning of apartments was based on the mode of mortgage as a model of financing and all issues have been settled and we have the full support of all government agencies on this important project. Instructing LDA Quality Control, he said that the ongoing construction work on the project should be closely monitored and quality control teams should raids and check the quality of construction work and send the report to Engineer Amir Riaz Qureshi. Relevant officers and contractors should use all resources to bring the LDA City New Pakistan Apartments project to completion as per the PM’s vision, he directed.
He said that Additional DG Urban Planning Rana Taka Khan, Chief Engineer Abdul Razzaq Chohan, Project Director Iqrarul Hassan and other officers concerned had worked hard for this important project which was commendable. LDA’s vice-chairman said that LDA City New Pakistan Apartments project would be the starting point of a new culture for the provision of residential houses in Pakistan and through Islamic mortgage financing and ordinary citizens would also be able to own homes.
The cost was estimated at around Rs4.5 million per apartment but under the PM’s vision we worked tirelessly to provide this facility to the low income people and we managed to reduce this cost to about Rs2.7 million, he claimed. He said that he was monitoring all the important projects, including LDA City, Avenue One, which were mired in problems and had taken practical steps to solve the problems faced by the projects. LDA City Housing Scheme 10,000 allottees were facing problems and the court and NAB wanted their problems to be resolved soon, he revealed adding 10,000 LDA City allotments had been made by balloting and next balloting would be held for Jinnah Sector of LDA City very soon. The problems of affected citizens of Avenue One Scheme were being resolved expeditiously and next month, balloting would be held and all the victims would be allotted plots.
Engineer Amir Riaz Qureshi said that LDA would take care of buildings and other infrastructure after taking over the apartments. He said that a total of 35,000 apartments would be constructed under LDA City New Pakistan Apartments project and in the first phase, 4,000 residential apartments were being constructed. He said 125 blocks of four-storey apartments would be constructed and one block would consist of 32 residential units. The area of each apartment will be 650 square feet, he said and added that it would consist of two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a balcony. Construction standard was kept close to A category and more than 60% space in apartment blocks has been reserved for roads, greenbelts, parks etc. On the occasion, LDA Vice-Chairman SM Imran and Engineer Amir Riaz Qureshi also presented souvenirs to the LDA officers on their excellent performance.