Khpal Kor Scheme: KP govt, BoK sign agreement to provide loan to 0.2m employees

PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government and the Bank of Khyber (BoK) have signed an agreement to provide soft loans to 0.2 million low grade government employees to build own houses under the Khpal Kor Scheme.

Talking to The News on Monday, Special Assistant to Chief Minister on Housing Dr Amjad Ali said that a delegation of Provincial Housing Authority had recently met high-ups of State Bank of Pakistan where they proposed housing scheme for the government employees of the province.

“The BoK was the first one to offer loan for 0.2 million houses in the province but the government also expects from other banks to pledge such facility to the low scale public servants,” he said.

He added that the first project under Khpal Kor Scheme would be launched within two months at Dheri Zardad area in Charsadda where hundreds acres of land had been identified for the scheme.

“A loan of up to Rs2 million would be provided to a government servant to build five-marla house under the scheme,” he said and added that the loans would be returned within twenty years along with minimum interest rate.

Dr Amjad said that there were shortage of 2.2 million houses in the province. He said the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf-led government had planned to sign agreement for at least 0.6 million houses with different commercial banks.

“We have also asked the district nazims and administration to identity residential lands for Khpal Kor Scheme so that the government employees in the districts could also benefit from the scheme,” he added.

The special assistant said facilitation centres would be established in each divisional headquarters where the applicants for Khpal Kor Scheme could get forms and other relevant documents under one-window operation.

He said that the Provincial Housing Authority had also launched public-private partnership scheme to build commercial plazas, markets and residential flats on provincial government lands as these valuable lands had been lying unutilised for years.

“The PHA is a government body and it can sign any deal with private firms to build commercial buildings on the government land,” he said.

He added that advertisements had been published in leading newspapers for this purpose.

The special assistant also claimed credit for launching two mega housing schemes - Peshawar Model City and CPEC City in the province. He said that the projects would earn over Rs70 billion for provincial exchequer when completed.