peshawar   -     The Board of Peshawar Development Authority (PDA) has formally approved the final master plan of “New Peshawar Valley” the mega housing project of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Government.

The 8th Board meeting of Peshawar Development Authority was held on Tuesday with Chief Minister Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Mahmood Khan in the chair. Provincial Minister Taimur Jhagra, MPA Pir Fida, Principal Secretary to Chief Minister Amjad Ali Khan, and other board members attended the meeting.

The meeting was given a detailed briefing on the final master plan of the project and it was told that the housing scheme will be established on 1,86,400 Kanal of land out of which 41 percent area i.e 43.5 Kanal of land has been allocated for residential plots and apartments while 28 percent area has been allocated for the construction of roads. Similarly, 16 percent of the area for Parks and open spaces, seven percent for public buildings, five percent would be utilized for commercial activities and parking, and two percent of area has been proposed for the graveyard.

Under the project, all indispensable for any modern housing society have been planned. According to the detailed master plan, initially, 62,056 residential plots of different categories have been proposed including 16,312 plots of three Marla, 17,201 plots of five Marla, 3,402 plots of seven Marla, 9,526 plots of 10 Marla, 13,415 plots of one Kanal, 1,494 plots of two Kanal and 706 plots of four Kanal. Some 8,000 Kanal of land has been reserved which would also be utilized for the provision of residential plots on the need basis.

Other key features of the project include the Civil Secretariat, Media Enclave, Sports City, Education, and Health City which will be equipped with state-of-the-art facilities of international standard. It was further informed that a mega park with the nomenclature of “Khyber Park” would also be established under the project which would have Cultural Villages, Gandhara Museum, Theme Park, Forest, Adventure Area, and all other state of the art recreational facilities.

Briefing about the Access Road alignment, it was told that Main Expressway along with service roads would be constructed whereas other approach roads already available on the different sides of the project would also be rehabilitated.

The Chief Minister has termed this project as the need of the hour to control the burden of increasing population in the provincial capital and directed the quarters concerned to ensure implementation of the project as per stipulated timelines. He also directed the quarters concerned to ensure issuance of intimation letters of plots to the owners of verified lands as per laid down formula within a week and made it clear that no delay would be tolerated to this effect.

He further directed to speed up acquisition and verification of remaining land under the land-sharing formula adding that his government would go all out to complete this mega housing project as fast as possible. All the stakeholders would have to play their respective roles well in time for the purpose, he remarked.