The Hindu 06.11.2009
New houses for over 8,000 families in slums: Minister
Staff Reporter
Board is in the process of obtaining about 17 acres for the construction
Tirupur: The Tamil Nadu Slum Clearance Board will construct new dwellings for 8,226 families residing in 36 slums in Tirupur city to provide them with better basic amenities and hygienic environment, according to Minister for Slum Clearance and Accommodation Control Suba Thangavelan.
Phased manner
“The construction will be carried out in a phased manner with 1,500 houses for as many numbers of families coming up in the first stage,” he told reporters here on Thursday.
He said that the Board was in the process of obtaining about 17 acres for the construction of 1,500 houses identified for the preliminary phase. The next set of houses, according to him, will be constructed once the city was brought under the Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission next fiscal.
Each of the houses would have living space ranging from 270 sq. ft. to 330 sq. ft.
Amenities
Mr. Thangavelan said that housing units would be established in four-storied blocks and provided an access to basic amenities like drinking water, street light, storm water drains and sewer lines.
He said that similar slum development programmes had been taken up for cities like Chennai, Coimbatore and Madurai. “In Chennai, we have already completed the construction of 10,000 dwellings out of the 1,11,111 housing units planned for the rehabilitation of slum dwellers before 2013,” he said.
Free cycles
Earlier, Mr. Thangavelan along with Minister for Highways and Minor Ports M.P. Saminathan distributed free cycles to 3,700 students at Nanjappa Corporation Boys HSS here. Collector C. Samayamoorthy was present.
