Board Urges Incoming Govt To Facilitate House Ownership

The Executive Secretary,
Federal Government Staff Housing Loans Board, Dr Hannatu Fika, has  urged the incoming government to facilitate ownership of houses by public servants.
Fika made the appeal during an interview with newsmen in Abuja, on Thursday
She said such facilitation would enable public servants to own houses at affordable costs.
“The objective of the board is to grant soft loans to all federal public servants under a revolving fund.
“We are praying that the incoming government will look at our plight so that the injection of funds that have been done by the previous government will continue and be sustained.
“Government will have to come in because in the board we believe that it is the responsibility of government to ensure that public servants owned houses.
“When they own houses, they will perform optimally and this will change the negative impression that public servants are corrupt.
“Therefore, once they have their houses, majority of their problems would have been sorted out”, she said.
Fika said the board gives priority to retirees.
“I can conveniently tell you that no public servant retires without getting their loans.
“But what we have been able to do in the board is to batch applications that come to us and then service them on first come first served basis.”
She observed that many applicants do not want to wait for their turn. “They always persuade the board to give them the loans even when their turn has not come. This is a problem.
“We always encourage public servants who applied for loan to wait for their turn so that the limited resources we have in the board as a revolving loan will get to them.
“We rather advise them to wait for their turn because we believe that it will not be fair to start with the last before the first applicant”, she said.