Rourkela: The Rourkela Municipal Corporation (RMC) would spend over Rs 8 crore to set up transit homes for nearly 2,100 families who live in various slums of the city.
The houses of these families would be demolished in a phased manner and they would be rehabilitated in concrete houses under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY).
However, they would be shifted to transit homes before being finally settled in the PMAY houses. The PMAY houses would be built on a government land at Madhusudanpali and RMC has roped in a Delhi-based construction firm to set up these buildings.
According to reports, 769 transit homes would be set up on a patch of five acres which is lying vacant near Ambedkar Nagar slum in Basanti Colony.
While tender for construction of the transit houses would be floated after a green signal from the state housing and urban development department, the construction is likely to begin by the end of June or beginning of July, RMC’s assistant executive engineer Jayant Kumar Maitra said.
There will be three community lavatories having 150 toilets, three anganwadi centres and three community centres for these 769 families to be put up in these transit houses. RMC has also decided to erect boundary walls around these houses and provide facilities like drainage system and safe drinking water to the inhabitants.
In the first phase, the houses of 769 families would be pulled down and they would be shifted to the transit homes. They would be settled in the model floor buildings once the construction is completed there.
In the next phase, another 769 families would be shifted to the vacant transit homes after demolition of their houses.
According to sources, 2,100 families have been identified who are eligible to get model floor buildings under PMAY and they would have to bear a certain part of the construction cost.
It may be recalled that UPA government had launched the Rajiv Awas Yojana (RAY) to provide concrete houses to the urban poor. Later, the scheme was renamed as PMAY by the present government. The PMAY houses would be constructed over 36 acres of government land between Malgodam and Madhusudanpalli under public-private-partnership mode, it was learnt.
Earlier, the RMC authorities had sent a proposal to the Centre seeking construction of 4,800 houses at the cost of Rs 258 crore.
Meanwhile, more than 800 slum-dwellers of the city have claimed they had not been included in the scheme even as they are eligible to get a house each under the scheme. PNN
