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Builders demand housing policy

PANAJI: The Goa Chamber of Housing Industry (GCOHI), which represents real estate developers and builders, has urged the State Government to come out with a comprehensive housing policy incorporating in it plan for providing affordable housing to Goans in the lower-middle- and middle-class segments.

It has proposed to the Government to plan land estates on the lines of industrial estates and make available land at low rates to the industry.

GCOHI president Datta D. Naik told presspersons here on Thursday that if such a policy was formulated, builders could make available affordable apartments for the benefit of Goans in the two segments.

The GCOHI has given a number of suggestions to the Government, including revamping of the Goa Town and Country Planning (TCP) Act, 1974, assessment of all vacant land including plots and sheds in State-owned industrial estates and survey of all unauthorised and illegal structures, including slums.

Mr. Naik, who is also a member of the task force formed to formulate the State Regional Plan 2021, said that the GCOHI had also put forth a proposal for a Goa Infrastructure Fund with provision to levy development cess on all lands at the point of zone change.

Putting to rest controversy over his role in the scrapped State Regional Plan 2011, Mr. Naik said that as president of the GCOHI it was his stand that it should not be scrapped but should be modified by deleting all the controversial zone changes.

All zone changes had been frozen from May 2005, and they would continue to be so till March 2008 , he said.

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Builders demand housing policy

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