Govt decides to review accommodation allocation rules

ISLAMABAD: The federal government has decided to review the Accommodation Allocation Rules, 2002. A committee have been set up by the Federal Secretariat for Housing and Construction to review the rules of allotment of government houses.

The chairman of the committee is Saeed Ahmad Malik, deputy secretary of the ministry. The committee will submit its report this week. The committee has been directed to prepare a draft of the amended rules. Among the issues being reviewed is the abolition of 15(2) B.

There are two opinions on this issue. Under this rule, the house of a retired federal employee is allotted to his employee son or daughter. The position of young officers is that this rule should be abolished as the allotment falls under the category of out-of-turn allotment while other employees wait for years in the waiting list. The position of senior employees is that this will prevent them from becoming homeless after retirement. The proposal to change the existing categories for allotment of A, B, C, D, E type houses is also under consideration.

There is a suggestion that only the principle of seniority should be adopted without discrimination. The number of government houses is less than the number of employees due to which thousands of employees are on the waiting list. In Peshawar, Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad, the number of government offices is 29,000, while there are 50,000 employees in the waiting list.

In Islamabad alone, the number of government houses is 17,465, while there are 27,000 employees in the waiting list. The reason for the low number of houses is that in 1995, the federal government banned the construction of new government houses, which widened the gap between the demand and availability of houses.