Bhubaneswar: The state government Thursday approved 126 new housing projects for construction of 21,894 dwellings in 88 urban local bodies (ULBs).
The state-level sanctioning and monitoring committee headed by Chief Secretary Aditya Prasad Padhi has approved these projects.
Padhi asked the concerned officials to prepare an action plan on ‘Housing for All’ on saturation mode for urban poor. Target was set to complete the survey for the purpose by end of this month.
The Chief Secretary also advised the Housing and Urban Development department to include a bath facility along with the toilet for dwelling units under the scheme.
Housing and Urban Development (H&UD) secretary G Mathivathanan said third party quality monitoring of the project implementation is being regularly undertaken in various ULBs. So far, 118 visits have been made by the third party and no serious irregularities have been found with regard to selection of beneficiaries and quality of construction of the houses.
All the houses constructed under the mission have also been geo-tagged. Since the scheme is a beneficiary-led scheme, the monetary assistance is being released to bank account of the beneficiaries directly from the government, he said. Odisha was the first state in the country in introducing online transfer of benefits directly to the beneficiaries, he added.
According to sources, earlier 72,542 dwelling units were sanctioned for 112 ULBs. Out of this, around 16,000 houses have been completed so far, while another 20,000 houses are in different stages of completion.
An additional 26,000 houses have been taken up for construction and balance are in process of scrutiny. With Thursday’s sanction, total number of dwelling units sanctioned under the Mission goes up to 94,436 in 112 ULBs, the source said.
Under the mission, the beneficiaries are given n assistance of Rs 2 lakh each from various schemes through convergence for construction of their own houses. Around Rs 1.5 lakh comes from PMAY and an additional fund of Rs 50,000 is provided by state government. Apart from this, Rs 8000 is provided under SBM for construction of household toilet.