NHC to address housing in Pom

Caption: NHC Managing Director John Dege

By MATTHEW VARI

Sunday, February 23, 2014 (Sunday Chronicle, PNG)

THE National Housing Corporation announced last week of its plans to build a total of 40,000 new homes for Port Moresby residents to address the current lack of housing issue in the city.

In a press conference held last week by the Managing Director for NHC John Dege in response to The National’s front page story titled “Housing a major worry”, on the February 13, last week- he confirmed the big issue of housing in the city, but announced the government’s plans to address it.

“There was an article in the National’s front page that was brought to the attention of the chamber of commerce by various interested groups.”

“The research is consistent with data provided by NRI and various stakeholders in the past.”

“Housing Corporation through its own internal survey have confirmed that there is a huge shortage in housing in the country- not only in port Moresby but elsewhere also in the country.”

He said that previous governments, had given away state properties to sitting tenants, which reduced all the housing stock they had for the government.

Dege added 20 years ago the corporation had 12,000, but were reduced through various giveaways schemes initiated by various governments, to a point that they were now left with less than a 1000 properties.

“The government has not provided adequate funding to restock the houses they have given away under the various giveaway schemes.”

“That does not mean that the corporation and other stakeholder will remain complacent and expect something to happen out of the blue.”

“We have commenced the delivery of a new stock of houses, and today I am grateful to announce that the O’Neill Dion Government were able to secure two major UDL (Urban Development Leases) in Port Moresby.”

“The land Behind NRI, and the Duran Farm which is at the back of Moitaka Power Station and near the McGregor Barracks.”

He said the corporation was going to secure just under 40,000 service blocks from both UDLs- as the government had directed that they service the blocks and allow the public to take service blocks and build within their own capacity.

“This is the programs we’ve commenced and we are developing the two UDLs jointly with the department of National Planning, Office of urbanization, National Research Institution, the department of lands, and the National Housing Corporation.”

“Once all the approvals are completed we will be able to commence on the civil aspect by mid this year.”

“The government has been kind enough to appropriate K60 million in the exercise, which also includes the rural and district housing programs.”

With the announcement the government would be able to deliver a sizable volume of housing stock to re-fleet the housing stock that have been given up by the various government giveaway schemes.

“The current government’s predicament is to restock the current public service housing dilemma- if that is not addressed than we will have a very chronic situation of housing shortage,” Dege said.

Work on the UDLs are set to start by June of this year with physical works taking place on the sites.

He added that the hoped to deliver a maximum of houses 1,000 plusbuilt annually, to eventually reach the 40,000 mark.

Preference will be given to public servants, however, all citizen are entitled to apply.

“We are looking at mostly public servants and also those public sector employees who fall within the thresholds- where designs will be in three levels depending on affordability- with the Low-end model at K100,000, Medium-end at K150,000, and High-end at K300,000.”

“When we bring in the essential services like Water, power, road network and sewerage system and we will begin the actual construction of the homes.”