Urban News

The Hindu 30.12.2009

JNNURM: A ray of hope for slum dwellers success

M.T. Shiva Kumar

Bangalore: The slum dwellers across a few wards of the BTM Layout Assembly constituency are known to play a significant role in election campaigns. Apart from turning out in good numbers for the polls, they engage themselves in electioneering, distribution of handbills, door-to-door canvassing and other campaign-related activities.

Basic amenities

But ironically, the fruits of democracy don’t seem to have reached them. Though they have been seeking basic amenities for long, slum dwellers of Ejipura, Mahalingeshwara Layout, Indira Gandhi Nagar and Rajendra Nagar continue to be deprived of drinking water, drainage, sanitation and electricity, besides housing.

Right now they are pinning their hopes on the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), which offers a ray of hope to them. The authorities have drawn up a scheme to construct 650 houses for the slum dwellers with all basic amenities.

Under the project, the area will be provided with drinking water supply, electricity connection, good roads and an underground drainage system.

The makeshift dwellings in the slums will make way for the construction of brick-and-mortar houses with RCC roofs. “Construction work on 25 houses has already begun in Rajendranagar slum. Shortly the project will be extended to other slums in the constituency,” said area MLA Ramalinga Reddy.

Flooding

Once the project is completed, the slum dwellers can hopefully bid goodbye to their miserable quality of life. For decades now, they have coped with the consequences of the absence of a drainage system which result in flooded homes.

The worst affected are residents of Ejipura slum, who are forced to endure misery during the monsoon. The authorities are hopeful their travails will end once the project is completed.

The Hindu 29.12.2009

Housing scheme: local bodies’ role stressed

Staff Reporter

PATHANAMTHITTA: Local Administration Minister Paloli Mohammed Kutty has said the local self-government institutions should exploit the National Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) for providing housing for the homeless in a time-bound manner.

The Minister was launching a campaign on the ‘Thozhilum Veedum’ project aimed at providing employment to the unemployed and housing for the homeless as part of the EMS Housing Scheme in Pathanamthitta district here on Monday afternoon.

According to him, the State had a total of five lakh homeless people and of them one lakh did not have even a cent of land of their own. The government’s efforts were to provide a proper dwelling place to all the homeless people in the State, he said.

The Minister said the local self-government institutions should take it their social and moral responsibility to provide home for all the homeless people, making use of every available opportunity to achieve the goal.

He aid special care should be taken to avoid controversies while implementing the project as the primary aim was to provide housing to the maximum number of homeless people in the first phase of the project itself.

Mr. Mohammed Kutty said the government was trying to make the NREGS beneficial to the State’s farming sector, and the watershed development programme could be implemented in private lands up to an area of five acres. This would also generate more jobs, besides achieving considerable improvement in agriculture production, he said.

The Minister said local self-government institutions should also make appropriate planning for the successful implementation of the housing scheme.

Even though the Union government had fixed Rs.100 as the daily wage under the NREGS, it had permitted the State government to give the prevailing rate of Rs.125 to workers engaged in various NREGS schemes and steps should be taken to disburse the wages in two week’s time, he said.

He said a total of 19,158 families had been identified as homeless in the district.

K. Sivadasan Nair, MLA, presided over the function. Appinazhakathu Santhakumari, district panchayat president; A.P. Jayan, vice-president; S. Lalithambika, District Collector, and M. Ajayakumar, project director, also spoke.