No flood, rain worries for Benazir Basti residents

Tuesday, August 03, 2010
By Jan Khaskheli

Karachi

Standing in front of her beautiful house in the newly developed Behen Benazir Basti in the village of Bachal Jam Jokhio, Benazirabad (Nawabshah) district, 50-year-old Mai Aakulzadi told The News that she was lucky to have got the house, which saved her from floods this monsoon.

Mai Aakulzadi was among the lucky ones to have escaped the floods which have demolished a number of makeshift homes and left many people homeless in low-lying areas. “The heavy rains always destroyed our abodes in the past and we had to rebuild them on our own,” she said. “Life was harder then,” she reminisced, adding that those days now seem to be over for them.

Mai enjoyed the monsoon rains after a long time, realising that she lives in a house that is not vulnerable to flood and, by extension, devastation. “Previously, our houses were never able to survive heavy downpours,” she said. “Even during light showers, the roofs of the houses would begin to leak and we, fearing the roofs would cave in, had to live in ordinary shelters in the open.”

Like Mai, all the beneficiaries of the Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Housing Cell (SBBHC), in Benazirabad district, are equally pleased with living in secure houses in monsoon, said Ismail Zardari, Project Manager, Research and Development Foundation (RDF), which is implementing the low-cost housing project.

These houses have two bedrooms, a veranda, an open courtyard, a kitchen and a toilet. The PPP-led government has identified deserving women, who are being given the low-cost houses in three districts where the scheme is operational i.e. Benazirabad, Tando Allahyar and Hyderabad.

The RDF is currently working on 1,700 houses in 48 villages of the three districts; 1,100 in Benazirabad and 300 each in Tando Allahyar and Hyderabad. Building one such house costs between Rs2,25000 to Rs2,42000, depending on the requirements and expenditures of the area.

“The fact that most of beneficiaries have not been troubled by the rains this year has immensely encouraged the project management,” Ismail said.

Ziaul Islam, director of the SBBHC, claimed that they have not received a single complaint regarding any technical fault in the newly-built houses. However, he said, the rains have affected the pace of building more houses. The possession of as many as 10,000 houses, of which 6000 houses are almost complete, would be handed over to the deserving persons by the end of this year.

“We have planned a strategy to keep handing over the possession of the houses to the deserving people through EDO revenue and other relevant officials as soon as work on a small number of the houses is completed rather than waiting for all the houses to complete and then giving them to the people at once,” he said.

Meanwhile, Benazirabad Revenue EDO Rashid Zardari, who monitors the project in the district, said that work on 400 houses has been completed. The EDO hoped that new houses would bring improvement such people’s lives.

RDF Executive Director Masood Mahesar said that they have taken the suggestions of the beneficiaries while constructing the houses to avoid any possible technical fault. Male members of beneficiary families are working together with the technical staff and have contributed a lot in the building process, he said. Mahesar felt that it was an important aspect of the project.

ends