Small House cum Garden Project

The majority of rural poor in Punjab are landless tenants and agriculture labour, which constitutes 15.6% of the rural community. Lack of land ownership is a major contributing factor to enhance poverty in the rural setup as it is becoming a scarce source. Studies also show that the most vulnerable are those without having any assets. Owning a piece of land is a dream for them as it would provide them the monetary as well as social security. The proposed scheme will play a significant role to reduce the incidence of poverty among the landless rural poor through enhancing their income and resultantly adding nutritional value in food.

The empirical evidence also supports the concept as it has been successfully implemented in a number of countries especially East Bengal in India. The concept is therefore, quite in line with the objectives of the present regime which believes in poverty reduction, social equity and aiming at empowering the rural poor.

The project aims to eradicate poverty and bringing the poorest of the poor out of poverty on sustainable basis by providing them an additional resource base. These poorest households will comprise of landless farm labourers. The concept of House-cum-Garden Plots for eradication of poverty was initially discussed by Justice Retd. Mr. Khalil-ur-Rehman now Chairman, Project Steering Committee with Professor Roy Posterman, Chairman, Rural Development Institute, Seattle, USA and Mr. Yohnues Kassahun, International Development Law Organization, Rome in a video conference held on July 11, 2006. A series of meetings were held with the stakeholders in P&D Department & a consensus was developed to implement a project in the first phase in three southern districts i.e. Bahawalpur, Bahawalnager & Muzaffargarh.

It was earlier proposed to allot plots of two kanals land to 500 eligible households in each district having preferably fertile soil, sweet water & requisite socio-economic infrastructure. This exercise was initially taken by Planning & Development Department in 2006. After holding a series of meetings in P&D Department with respect to concept and identification of land, P&D Department submitted a summary to Chief Minister proposing a Project Steering Committee (PSC) under the Chairmanship of Justice (Retd.) Khalil-ur-Rehman. Agriculture Department was asked to work as Secretariat of PSC. PSC was notified on 20-05-2008 (Annex-A). Later on district Rajanpur was included as per directions of the then Chief Minister Punjab.

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