Urban News

The Hindu     18.05.2010

BMC takes up beautification of city

Staff Reporter

BERHAMPUR: The city walls have started to come alive with paintings depicting tribal life of undivided Koraput district.

It is part of the effort of the Berhampur Municipal Corporation to beautify the city. Most of the walls of public buildings by the side of major roads in the city have got decorated by paintings. These walls earlier bore mutilated look due to posters and graffiti.

But the city dwellers are wondering how come tribal paintings and pictures depicting tribal life got predominance in these paintings. It may be noted that Berhampur, the largest trading centre of south Orissa is also known as the gateway to undivided Koraput district. So, no one has complained about it.

But the reason behind this predominant depiction of tribal life on city walls is that the painters who are painting these pictures are from Koraput. Five painters from Koraput have been utilised by the local municipal corporation are involved in this painting work. These painters are also quite happy as it has provided them necessary income source. Senior painter in the team, Manoj Kumar Patnaik said such beautification efforts by urban bodies can provide income source to painters. He added that in recent years, advent of modern printing and large printed flex boards had snatched away earnings of painters. He said they are being paid Rs. 22 per square feet of painting. Till now they have painted 22,000 square feet of wall around the city.

Apart from tribal life and traditional tribal paintings, these young painters have also depicted issues related to common man like global warming, depletion of forest cover, wastage of water resources etc. But most of the time the characters depicted in these paintings tend to be tribals.

These painters have also drawn up some paintings related to problems of the city like drinking water crisis and rise in fire accidents during summer months.

Indian Express 04.05.2010

Civic body to spend Rs 1.5 crore on rehabilitation

Express News Service Tags : corporation, spending money on rehabilitation Posted: Tuesday , May 04, 2010 at 0020 hrs

Pune: Around 1,500 slum dwellers became homeless on Monday after the fire destroyed 350 of the 2,276 hutments spread over 4.3 hectares. The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has assured assistance to the tune of Rs 1.5 crore for rehabilitation of the affected families. Municipal Commissioner Mahesh Zagade who supervised the rescue operation said the PMC was implementing various slum rehabilitation schemes - Rajiv Awas Yojana, Basic Service for Urban Poor (BSUP) under Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) of central government and a separate slum rehabilitation project of the state government.

“The slums are prone to incidents of fire and it becomes difficult for the civic administration to ensure the safety of people here,” Zagade said. The rehabilitation of the slums in high-risk areas will now be given priority, he said.

The slum had come up over the years on land owned by Agriculture Marketing Committee Board; it was declared as a slum in the official records of the civic body. The PMC had conducted its survey and was at the initial stages of planning a rehabilitation project under state government initiative.

“The condition of city slums is very bad and incidents of fire are unavoidable in the present situation,” said Mayor Mohansingh Rajpal. He said the implementation of slum rehabilitation projects has been at a slow pace and civic administration should ensure speedier implementation notwithstanding opposition from some political parties. Rajpal said the civic body would divert Rs 10,000 from funds of each elected representative to raise Rs 1.5 crore for the rehabilitation. The civic body will also provide tin sheets to affected people for erecting their transit camp of 100 sq feet and manpower to assist those whose huts have been destroyed completely. The PMC will also distribute cooking utensils, food and drinking water. The civic health department will carry out medical checkup of affected persons at regular intervals for some time and provide public toilets.