Housing for middle class

Dharma S. SAMARANAYAKA

REEL as one of the entities operating under the Ministry of Urban Development and Sacred Area Development to provide housing for under-privileged communities in the Colombo municipal area has improved its capacity to build apartment houses for the lower middle class category of people such as government servants, artists, media people and others who are in need of houses at an affordable price.

Today the launching of this condominium housing scheme at Palengastuduwa, Borella in collaboration with the Ministry of Urban Development and

 Sacred Area Development, REEL, Urban Development Authority and CECON Lanka (Pvt) Ltd., is the pioneering step of the above endeavours.

The CEO of CECON Lanka (Pvt) Ltd., K. Sirinivas Gupta, expressed his views on the investment in the housing sector in Sri Lanka.

“With a large middle income people, CECON sees vast potential in affordable housing schemes. Sri Lanka is getting urbanised very fast and the apartment culture is picking up fast, due to various factors like searching of land , high land value, short of infrastructure facilities, high construction cost and the time factor, hassle of constructing houses by themselves etc. With all these problems, there is a dearth of construction companies in the organised sector who can construct affordable, high quality houses for the masses at affordable prices CECON wishes to enter into this virgin market and construct affordable housing for the masses and fulfill the long cherished aspiration of owning a house for themselves of the people of Sri Lanka.”

The proposed building at Pelengastuduwa consists of five blocks of 29 storied, state of art towers totaling 840 two and three bedroom apartments. At podium level there is a international style apartment lobby, commercial/ retail and arcade spaces. It is also proposed to have vertical parking and a Community Centre with Gym, Daycare Centre, Multi purpose function hall etc. in addition to, Residential apartments. CECON will be deploying state of art technology, equipment, and highly skilled and qualified engineers and workers from all over the world to complete this project as scheduled. The project is to be completed within five years.

CECON is looking further at long term investment in Sri Lanka, and has carried out many similar projects in India. CECON wishes to emulate similar success in Sri Lanka. CECON has been in the construction field in Sri Lanka for the past 25 years and wishes to bring their vast experience and expertise in this field in Sri Lanka. It has a consortium of National and International partners and suppliers. For the proposed Housing Project at Pelengastuduwa, Borella, CECON will be investing more than US$ 30 million, and they will be investing more as per the requirement of the future projects.