Naya Pakistan Housing Programme: Cabinet approves construction of 135,000 apartments, says Fawad

ISLAMABAD: The federal cabinet on Tuesday approved the constitution of Naya Pakistan Housing Authority under which 135,000 apartments would be built in the first phase of the programme across the country.

Briefing journalists about decisions taken in the cabinet meeting, chaired by Prime Minister Imran Khan, Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry said the Premier would inaugurate the project in Islamabad where 25,000 housing units would be constructed. He said 110,000 units would be constructed in Balochistan, adding a special town would be built for Gwadar fishermen under the scheme. He said the cabinet also gave approval to the proposal of building a state-of-the-art Media University in the country with the objective to give modern technological training to the future media professionals. He added the university was being set up with the merger of existing academies of Pakistan Television, Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation and Information Service.

The minister said he may visit China soon to seek professional cooperation for the Media University which was a flagship project of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. He said he had discussed the project with Chinese firms ZTE and Huawei Technologies

Co Ltd and would also take the US firms on board. He said the government was planning to build this university on public-private partnership model and no funds from public sector would be spent on it.

Chaudhry further said Finance Minister Asad Umar had reached the US to hold talks with the International Monetary Fund in connection with bailout package and added Umar would also discuss asset declaration scheme with IMF officials.

He said Prime Minister Khan had directed crackdown against big fish involved in theft of electricity and gas, adding pilferage of electricity worth Rs40 billion had been prevented due to effective measures taken by the present government. He said cases had been registered against those involved in gas and electricity theft and added gas worth Rs3 billion had been stolen in last three years.

The information minister said a train station was being established at Nankana Sahib after the name of Baba Guru Nanak. He added the cabinet gave approval for binding all government departments to use Pakistan Post for official communication. Chaudhry said a grant of 94 million euros from Germany had been approved to be utilised for the provision of clean drinking water to the residents of Faisalabad.