The Hindu 08.01.2010

Census of slum dwellers

Staff Correspondent

Belgaum: The District Urban Development Cell (DUDC) will carry out a census of people living in urban slums in Belgaum district from January 18 to February 20.

According to sources here on Thursday, the Union Government is preparing a national data bank with a view to implementing poverty alleviation schemes, including providing housing facilities to the poor living in slums in the country.

A meeting of heads of urban local bodies, including the Belgaum City Corporation, was held to discuss the matter on Wednesday.

As per Census 2001, 1.56 lakh people are living in 89 declared slums and 66 non-declared slums falling under the jurisdiction of 17 urban local bodies in the district.

As many as 220 enumerators and 59 supervisors have been engaged to carry out the census. The people living in slums and social organisations have been urged to cooperate with DUDC in carrying out the exercise.

Indian Express 06.01.2010

Mhada flats: lukewarm response to sale of forms

Over the last four days, the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA) has sold around 2 lakh application forms to hopeful homebuyers for its 3,449 new flats. The flats will given out through a draw of lots in the first week of April.

The response is, however, feeble as compared to the overwhelming response received last year when the sale of forms had crossed 1.80 lakh in the first two days. At the time of the lottery, there were 4.33 lakh aspirants for the 3,863 flats with people jostled in serpentine queues daily to collect forms from the15 branches of HDFC.

This time the forms will be available at 75 branches of the Saraswat Co-operative Bank in Mumbai, Thane and Navi Mumbai throught the day.

MHADA officials attribute the reason for the relatively lukewarm response to the fact that 80 per cent of the flats available are for the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) and Lower Income Groups (LIG) category. Only very few flats are available in the one and two bedroom categories for the middle (MIG) and high income groups (HIG). Reservations for various categories have further reduced the flats available to half. For instance, of the 150 two-bedroom flats in Versova, only 77 are for the general public.

Besides Versova, the flats are available in Mankhurd, Malvani, Dahisar and Powai with the largest sized flats being three 1114 sq ft row houses at Dindoshi in Malad. “Also, this time to avoid facing flak after the allotment of flats, we have clarified that there would be no water available in the flats until 2011 owing to water cut imposed by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). This might have also deterred many from applying for flats,” said a MHADA official.The last date for buying the forms is January 21.