KARACHI: All political parties are promising to do their best to overcome the shortage of housing units after coming to power, assuring the voter that they have chalked out a plan to ensure homes for the homeless on instalments.

Taj Haider, a spokesman for the Pakistan People’s Party, said in an interview with Dawn his party had hit upon a novel idea in that plots and houses would be allotted to the lady of the house under a slogan, Ghar Ghar Wali Kayliay.

Mr Haider said over eight million people were living in slums, or kachchi abadis, in Karachi and experts feared that a major natural calamity like an earthquake of 4 to 4.5 on the Richter scale would wipe these localities off the face of the earth.

If the PPP takes charge of the country, it would demolish all slums and construct four- and five-storeyed structures in neighbourhoods which would be a model of town planning, Taj Haider asserted.

The party would establish a special housing fund and indigenous resources will also be tapped for generating capital.

The construction boom would push up the demand for raw material, kick-starting over 30 allied industries and generating new jobs.

He said the PPP was opposed to foreign investment in real estate as foreign investors repatriate their profits after exchanging it with dollars, pressuring the country’s reserves and current account.

MQM: Sardar Ahmed, a former Sindh finance minister and joint in charge of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s Manifesto Committee, said in an interview his party had drawn up a plan for provision of shelter to everyone with ownership rights at affordable rates.

He, however, emphasised the need for a judicious distribution of resources to enable the provinces to achieve their goals.

He added that his party would stick to its demand for the creation of an independent finance commission and the transfer of sales tax and excise duty to the provinces.

Sardar Ahmed said the government should eschew the profit motive, conceding that the recently-launched scheme in Hawkesbay was a bit costly.

In future, we shall see to it that the poor benefit most from the government’s housing schemes.

He said his party would try to encourage the private sector to play its role in promoting housing for the shelterless. In addition, cooperative societies would be revived to cater for the low-income group.

Sardar Ahmed added that institutions modelled on the Grameen Bank would be set up to promote cooperative farming and marketing, besides housing.

The MQM has envisaged division of the province into two tiers _ mega and secondary. The former would comprise only Karachi and the rest of the province would fall under the latter category.

The secondary towns would have industrial estates, employment opportunities and civic amenities to check the flight of labour to the mega town. He said all kachchi abadis in Karachi would be regularised and then developed on modern lines.

In reply to a question about the wherewithal for the party’s lofty objectives, the former provincial minister said that avenues would be explored.

Another salient feature of the MQM’s housing vision, Sardar Ahmed said, was that all areas for the lower and lower middle classes would be developed near the downtown while posh localities would be situated at the periphery of the city. This would lower the financial burden on the salaried class which spends a big chunk of its income on getting to and from the workplace.

PML-N: Ahsan Iqbal, a spokesman for the Pakistan Muslim League-N, said a massive shortage of housing units had pushed property prices beyond the reach of all but the privileged few.

He claimed that his party had launched a scheme during the late 1990s which would have ensured respectable accommodation with ownership rights to the poor had it not been discontinued.

We shall revive the scheme with a renewed vision if we come to power again.