PESHAWAR, April 4: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has planned to establish a new township with the name of ‘Peshawar Model City’ on the outskirts of the capital city to provide better residential facilities to the citizens.

“The new township spread over 14,600 acres will have about 80,000 plots of different sizes, and as such this will be the largest township of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa,” officials in Peshawar Development Authority told this correspondent on Monday.

In this connection, Senior Minister Bashir Ahmed Bilour chaired a meeting, which was also attended by secretary local government and rural development Aurangzaib Khan, PDA director general Qazi Laiq Khan, DG local government Haji Abdul Jalil and other officials, according to a handout.

It said that the new township would be completed at a cost of Rs140 billion and the PDA had asked different line departments such as Pesco, Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited and PTCL to work out plans concerning the township.

The officials said that with the establishment of new township the southern area of Peshawar would also be developed as the PDA would spend over Rs10 billion on different link roads.

According to the initial plan, they said that in the first phase the township would be developed on 8,000 acre at a cost of Rs78 billion in five years and in the second five-year phase the township on 6,000 acre more would be constructed at a cost of Rs62 billion.

Section 4 of the Land Acquisition Act on the selected land will be imposed within few days for acquiring land, they said and added that the selected land was barren and rocky. The officials, however, refused to disclose the location where the new township would be established because before imposition of Section 4 the land mafia could buy the land.

The officials said that the establishment of the model city would discourage illegal housing societies. “We will give the people a township having a proper master plan with all basic facilities and security,” they said.

During the meeting, Mr Bilour also directed the PDA officials to accelerate construction work on the Regi Model Town, a project initiated some 20 years back but couldn’t be completed due to dispute on the land, said the handout.