Minister for Information and Broadcasting Senator Shibli Faraz Tuesday said the problem of land grabbers was discussed in the federal cabinet meeting which endorsed the ongoing operations against illegal occupiers of state land. Addressing a press conference here to give details of the decisions taken in the weekly cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Imran Khan, he said Railways Minister Azam Swati is working on the issue of occupied railways land and he has been further instructed to get recovered the government assets. Land grabbing has weakened the rule of law and also created a sense of insecurity among the public, especially the overseas Pakistanis, he said, adding it was responsibility of the government to protect the state assets.
Faraz said the government’s plan to boost construction activity was moving ahead as over 100,000 housing units were being built in different projects. He said under a government plan, the people were getting loans from banks for the low cost housing. On the instructions of the State Bank, he said, the banks had come up with packages for building of homes and had allocated five percent or Rs 378 billion of their loan portfolio for the purpose. The parliament had also passed the foreclosure law to protect such banks loans, he added.
According to a briefing of the Housing Ministry, about 35,700 housing units were being built presently while over 21,000 would be constructed in another six projects. Shibli Faraz said the government had put in place a mechanism to make it easy for the builders of houses, plazas and shopping malls to get no objection certificates and maps’ approval.
To a question, he said the media should ask the opposition as to what happened to their resignations as the January 31 deadline had already passed. Regarding the constitutional amendment for open ballot voting for Senate election, the minister said it was the government’s stated position that the Senate polls should be transparent, and he and his colleagues made their way to the House by depositing Rs 25,690 fee. “All had seen as how a party with six or seven votes, secured 20 votes in the previous Senate election.
