30 June
NOW is the time when all round efforts were being made toward making Yangon a modern economic city. New town pro-jects, industrial zone projects, housing and apartment projects were being implemented. In addi-tion to all of these, public housing estates developed 50 years ago were also being rebuilt or being planned to be rebuilt into a new public housing estates. One such public housing estate is Lanthit Public Housing Estate in Yangon.
Lanthit Public Housing Estate was situated in Lanmadaw Township between Bogyoke Aung San Road and Anawrahta Road on 4.7 acres of land. The initial Lanthit Housing Estate was built in 1958.
A tender was called in September 2016 to rebuild this housing estate. Five companies bid for the project and after selection and assessment in stages Say Paing Development Ltd. came out as the tender winner. The project was jointly organized by Department of Urban and Housing Development Ministry of Construction and Yangon Region government.
A ceremony to launch the construction work was held on 18 November 2018 and was attended by Union Minister for Construction U Han Zaw and Yangon Region Chief Minister U Phyo Min Thein.
At the launching ceremony Union Minister for Construction U Han Zaw said the project will fulfil the basic housing requirements of the public and noted that the ministry is cooperating with the private sector to build modern housing residences and increase home ownership in Yangon, Mandalay and throughout the entire country. He also said this project is a practical implementation of the public-private partnership mod-el, adding that the process for selecting the developer from the private sector was conducted with transpar-ency and followed national policy.
Additionally, Yangon Region Chief Minister U Phyo Min Thein said a master plan for urban development projects in the entire Yangon city was being developed.
The earlier Lanthit Public Housing Estate provid-ed 264 households with 264 apartments. These earlier apartments were not more than 600 sq. ft. in area. The new apartments will have bigger area than this and once the construction is completed the households that had lived in the earlier housing estate will be given back their respective apartments. During the construction period arrangements were also made to provide temporary residents for these former residences of the earlier housing estate. In addition to allocating back new apartments to the former res-idences, more apartments will also be available at a reasonable rate for new residences once the new Lanthit Public Housing Es-tate is completed.
The new Lanthit Public Housing Estate will have 4 main phases that includes two 25-story buildings, twenty-eight 6-story shop houses, a bus in-terchange and a taxi stand. This will be the first housing estate in Yangon that had incorporated a bus interchange in its area. Construction was started on 19 November 2018 and is expected to be completed in 2021.
Yangon Region Hluttaw representatives were also re-ported to be providing the pub-lic’s requirements to the public housing projects implemented in Yangon Region so these projects are expected to fulfill almost all the requirements of the public.
In commenting on the pro-ject Yangon Region Chief Min-ister U Phyo Min Thein said raising the living standard of the people is also raising the devel-opment of the country.
Sales centers, office spaces, shop houses and apartments in the two high-rise buildings and shop houses of the project were being constructed to an interna-tional standard and a develop-ment image of modern design will appear in one of Yangon’s major location.
Government had construct-ed 11 public housings back in 1958 and all had come of age passing 50 years. The last gov-ernment started the plan to rebuild those public housings with high rise buildings. Two were built in 52nd Street Public Housing and Link Road Public Housing. Lanthit Public Housing Estate is the third of its kind and the first to be conducted by the incumbent government.
By Zin Lin Myint
Translated by Handytips
