ISLAMABAD, May 24: Wapda has shelved an attractive “farm house scheme” near Lahore within 49 days of receiving down- payments from thousands of its officers and private individuals sponsored by Wapda employees.

Wapda officials told Dawn that in response to the authority’s advertisements, over 3,000 officers and almost equal number of private citizens from all over the country had applied for plots and deposited between Rs252,000 to Rs802,700 per plot as down-payment by the last date i.e. March 11, 2006. The remaining amount was to be paid by the members in six equal quarterly instalments.

However, subsequent developments compelled Wapda to shelve the scheme because some of the members of board of directors of the scheme were found involved in activities detrimental to the authority’s image, which is a public sector entity.

The federal government, these officials said, had also raised questions about the scheme.

As a result, Wapda informed the applicants on April 29 about its decision to refund down-payment to the applicants.

Wapda Chairman Tariq Hameed is the patron of the Wapda Housing Foundation (WHF), which launched WHF Farm Houses Project in January this year. Member Power Anwar Khalid is the chairman of the board of directors of the WHF, while Brig Najamus Saqib is the president of the foundation. Other members of the WHF include Khalid Javed, Brig Mushtaq Ahmad, Najeeb Tariq and Lt-Col Inam Ezad (all general managers of Wapda).

The Wapda Housing Foundation had also promised that after this farm house scheme for officers and their sponsored clients, another scheme of five to 10 marla urban scheme would be launched for employees of grade 1-16.

Wapda officers of grade 20 and above were asked to apply for 16, 12 and eight kanal plots, while officers of grade 18-19 were entitled to apply for 8-12 kanal plots. Similarly, officers of grade-17 submitted applications for four to eight kanal plots. All these officers were also entitled to raise money from private citizens through sponsorship scheme.

Total approximate cost of the land and development charges were fixed at the rate of Rs350,000 per kanal.

The total price of the four-kanal plot was fixed at Rs1.4 million, Rs2.8 million for eight kanal, Rs4.2 million for 12-kanal and Rs5.6 million for 16- kanal plots.

Interestingly, Wapda had not disclosed the location of the housing society “to safeguard interest of the scheme”. It was promised to the members that the site would be announced in the near future on completion of the membership and down-payments.

The members were promised that the location was 30 minutes away from Lahore General Hospital and the farm house would later be converted into permanent housing when the prices would go up by two to three times.

They were also pledged the provision of social and recreational facilities including country club, community centre and a golf-course while loan facility from Bank of Punjab was promised to the members. The Wapda Employees Cooperative Housing Society was established in 1979.