NHDA plans 5,000 houses islandwide

by Mohammed NAALIR

The National Housing Development Authority (NHDA) has planned to construct 5000 housing units islandwide including the North and East under the Gama Neguma rural livelihood development drive implemented under the "Mahinda Chinthana" national development concept before the end of this year at a cost of Rs. 378 million to ease the country's shelter problem, NHDA Chairman A.I. Wickrema said.

The NHDA has granted financial assistance to 3,023 families so far to construct their houses and the construction work on 1500 housing units have been completed.

Accordingly Rs. 15 million will be borne by the Treasury while NHDA is utilising Rs. 113 million from its previous housing loan recoveries and the beneficiaries are also expected to contribute Rs. 250 million to this mega project.

The project will be implemented at Divisional Secretariat Division Level.

The NHDA will grant Rs. 100,000 loan to a beneficiary family to construct a new housing unit while granting Rs. 75,000 to carry out improvement work on an existing house.

The necessary technical guidance will be given by the NHDA's technical division in the construction process.

The construction work on the project is expected to be completed within six months.The striking feature of this project is the major part of the project is being contributed by the beneficiaries.

NHDA sources added that a systematic mechanism has been drawn to recover the housing loans granted by the NHDA.

The NHDA could recover Rs. 83 million housing loans until June out of Rs. 98 million.

The housing loan recipients in Jaffna, Anuradhapura, Puttalam, Polannaruwa, Ampara, Vavuniya, Trincomalee and Badulla Districts have paid most of the loan.

Meanwhile the beneficiaries from Jaffna, Vavuniya and Mannar districts have settled 80 per cent of those loans.