Providing affordable housing to the people is the main area of concern for the Ghaziabad Development Authority (GDA)” Vice Chairperson (VC) Kanchan Verma told The Pioneer on Monday.
The VC said, “Owing to the recession in real estate sector, GDA is focusing on affordable housing projects. The authority has to focus on its own projects and further have to convince the real estate developers to focus on middle and lower middle segments of the society. Also the buying capacity of the people has weakened and we have no other option but to encourage potential buyers of this category to come forward to buy affordable houses”.
“Since Ghaziabad has a huge floating population who come here in search of their livelihood, affordable housing segment is the only hope for the revival of the real estate sector. Migrants can be approached to invest in affordable schemes. So they are the only potential buyers”, the VC said.
The Government at Centre and State are focused to cater to the needs of this segment. Prime Ministers housing scheme for the poor and lower middle class is our area of thrust, she said.
NITI Aayog is also encouraging developers to cater to the need of middle and lower middle segment of the society. “We are studying the NITI Aayog’s findings and focusing to act accordingly” added the VC.
“We are also focused at time bound execution of the Metro project for providing the last mile connectivity and we also intend to raise our problems with the State Government during the meeting slated for June 17”, she said.
“The major civil work of pillars of Metro project is on the verge of completion. laying the rail track and finishing work at stations are also being done. The hurdle is in buying of power and compartment which constitute a substantial project cost. Efforts are being made to put the pending revised DPR in the next cabinet meeting of the State Government. That should speed up the process in getting share from the Central Government due to which the project has been delayed”, the VC added.