Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Like so many others who are dreaming of houses where they can dwell in peace and happiness with their families, Zareeda Bibi is also longing for her house, but despite toiling hard she cannot even deposit her application within the registration centre to get her own accommodation under the Naya Pakistan Housing Programme.

Launched by Prime Minister Imran Khan, the ambitious housing project, which envisages construction of five million affordable houses for the underprivileged during the next five years, is a ray of hope for millions of poor people who have been struggling hard for the last many years but cannot even think of building their own house.

Zareeda, a housemaid, has been visiting the Naya Pakistan Housing Authority Registration Centre in Islamabad for the last three days, yet unable to deposit her registration form due to long queues of people outside the registration centre.

“It is difficult for me to visit the centre daily. Every day I have to wait in long queues for hours and return home without submitting the form, said Zareeda, who lives in a rented room in Phulgran, a rural area of the federal capital.

Though she is not educated enough and can’t even read Urdu, she somehow manages to get form and get it filled with the help of her relatives. Her husband is associated with a nearby school as a gardener. Her brother, who has also pinned hopes on the premier’s housing project, accompanies her to the registration centre and returns without submitting his sister’s form.

As far as getting a form is concerned, it is an easy task to get it from the National Database & Registration Authority’s (NADRA) website with all the required details needed for the registration. But people are facing difficulty in submitting the forms because of the limited number of registration centres announced for the purpose.

In the metropolitan, the registration forms can be submitted with the NADRA mega’s centre in Blue area, DC Office in G-11/4 and Tehsil Office in I-10/3.

The application form, available both in English and Urdu languages, is easy to understand, but restriction of filling the form in English is making it difficult for loads of people who even don’t know where to mark their fingerprints or put their signatures.

Aspirants can submit registration forms with the respective housing programme offices until December 21 with Rs 250 fee. It is a detailed document that demands information about applicants’ name, profession, current residence, family’s gross income, preferred monthly instalment plan, number of residents expected to live in the house, desired location of house and computerised national identity cards, mobile number, etc.

The document says that based on data collected from the forms, housing specification, including design, price and site, will be decided for applicants.

Besides, it also demands an undertaking from applicants that there will be no concealment or misrepresentation of facts while filling the forms.

Published in Daily Times, October 29^th 2018.