The Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Mrs Winifred Oyo-Ita has said that more than 23,000 civil servants have registered to become beneficiaries of the Federal Integrated Staff Housing (FISH) Programme of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration since it was launched in August last year at the Tafya District, Apo extension, Abuja.
Mrs Oyo-Ita disclosed this at a one-day FISH Housing Finance Workshop 2017 held in Abuja on Friday with the Theme: “Delivering Affordable Housing to Federal Civil Servants.”
She said in the first phase of the scheme, about 1,350 homes at various locations in Abuja and Lagos have been uploaded unto FISH programme with homes ranging from one bedroom to four bedrooms and allocation have commenced basically on “first come, first serve.”
While admitting that there are challenges associated with the building industry such as land acquisition, finance, mortgage loans and rising cost of building materials, among others, she said such things ought not to scare workers from attempting to own personal homes, especially when they are to suffer the consequences after retirement. This, according to her, was what prompted the introduction of the Federal Integrated Staff Housing programme which is a special intervention project aimed at soliciting for group land allocation with title deeds and relevant documents from the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) administration and the states to deliberately alleviate the housing challenges faced by federal civil servants across the country.
