The Urban Community Development (UCD) wing, the neglected wing of the
Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) would get more attention
for uplift of the poor and downtrodden sections of the society, GHMC
commissioner Somesh Kumar has said.

More than one-third of
Hyderabad’s population reside in slums and other poor settlements. Due
to lack of awareness, the poor suffer from many inadequacies in terms of
access to basic services and socio-  economic needs.

It was
therefore necessary to formulate and implement policies and programmes
to integrate the slums in the city with the mainstream society, both in
terms of infrastructure provision and social and economic development,
he said while interacting with newsmen here on Thursday.

To
encourage self-help groups to establish small businesses to provide
self-employment opportunities to the unemployed youth in the city, the
GHMC had drawn up several new initiatives for the women SHGs and youth,
the commissioner said and added that the number of SHGs within the GHMC
Limits would be increased from the present 4.5 lakh to seven lakh this
year.

He said that the GHMC would encourage the SHGs and
unemployed youth to set up as many as 100 reverse osmosis water plants
by involving 1,000 youth.

The purified potable water would be
supplied through water cans in slums and other places, especially in 
those areas where polluted the drinking water was polluted, at
affordable costs.

The GHMC would help the SHGs and youth through bank linkages to set up the reverse osmosis water plants.

Two
multi-skill training centres would be set up in each of the five GHMC
zones for  imparting training in various fields to the unemployed youth
to help them secure jobs  such as physical fitness trainers, cab
drivers, security guards, etc., Somesh Kumar said.

The GHMC would
launch a special drive to increase the registrations of girl children
under ‘Bangaru Talli’ this year as the registrations under the scheme
were not  satisfactory so far. As part of the special drive, the GHMC
would conduct awareness programmes in slums and weaker section colonies,
the commissioner said. 

Under the scheme, only 1,926 girl children had been registered in the City so far, he added.