Punjab’s information minister says more than 200,000 people have been given homes in two years as the UN-Habitat Scroll of Honour heads to the provincial housing programme.
LAHORE: Punjab Minister for Information and Culture Azma Bokhari has described the United Nations recognition of the “Apni Chhat Apna Ghar” housing project as an honour for 140 million Punjabis, asserting that no government in Pakistan’s history has received an award of such magnitude.
In an official statement issued on Thursday, Bokhari said the project is among the five major projects in the world and is the largest project in Pakistan. She added that it had been developed by the Punjab government through its own resources.
The honour in question is the 2026 UN-Habitat Scroll of Honour Award. According to a notification signed on September 14 by UN-Habitat Executive Director Anacláudia Rossbach, as reported by Dawn, the Punjab Housing and Town Planning Agency (PHATA) has been selected to receive the award through its Apni Chhat Apna Ghar programme after a competitive evaluation of nominations from around the world.
A Punjab government handout issued on Wednesday said the award will be presented at the global World Habitat Day event in Muscat, Oman, on October 5, with seminars and workshops on housing and urban development to follow there from October 6 to 8. Only five programmes worldwide are selected for the honour each year, the handout said.
Bokhari’s statement framed the recognition as an award to Maryam Nawaz, while the UN notification, as reported, names PHATA and its programme as the recipient.
Setting out the programme’s progress, the minister said that 202,913 houses have been built under Apni Chhat Apna Ghar, while 118,088 houses have been completed and another 53,233 houses are under construction. The statement did not explain how the three figures relate to one another.
The government’s Wednesday handout offered a separate breakdown: loans of about Rs260 billion for more than 200,000 houses, comprising over Rs196 billion for 134,439 houses in the first phase and more than Rs62 billion for 65,000 houses in the second. Around 125,000 families have already moved into their new homes, it said.
Bokhari said providing deserving and homeless people with their own homes had been Maryam Nawaz’s dream. In just two years, she said, the chief minister had succeeded in providing homes to more than 200,000 people, and has now set a target of providing “Apni Chhat” to 500,000 people within five years.
The minister said that, after the “Suthra Punjab” project, Apni Chhat Apna Ghar was another global recognition of Maryam Nawaz’s good governance. The chief minister’s successful projects were bringing recognition to Punjab and Pakistan around the world, she said, describing her two-year performance as a clear testimony to her achievements.
The programme provides interest-free loans to families to build homes on land they already own, covering plots of one to five marlas in urban areas and up to ten marlas in villages, according to the Punjab government. Applications are handled online, and officials describe it as Pakistan’s largest and first fully digital housing finance scheme.
In July, the chief minister also launched a companion initiative, “Apni Chhat, Mehfooz Chhat”, offering interest-free loans to strengthen unsafe roofs. That scheme was introduced in memory of 14 children who lost their lives in a roof collapse in Kahna.
The recognition arrives as the provincial government faces sustained opposition criticism on several fronts, and it gives the administration an external endorsement for one of its most heavily publicised programmes. Development has been a recurring theme of official messaging in recent weeks, including the chief minister’s remarks on progress in Pakpattan.
Bokhari, one of the cabinet’s most visible voices, has also been at the forefront of the government’s exchanges with the opposition. Attention will now turn to Muscat, where the award is due to be formally presented next month.
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