A RAY of hope for slum-dwellers

BHUBANESWAR: For a slum-dweller, owning a concrete house is a dream! But it’s no more now.

If all goes well, a few years hence, slum-dwellers in Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Puri, Sambalpur and Berhampur can really own one, courtesy the Rajiv Awas Yojana (RAY).

These cities together have around 900 slums having a population of over 9 lakhs.

The State Government has appointed the Bhubaneswar Development Authority (BDA) as the State-level nodal agency.

And the agency has already started working in this regard. The Annual Report-2010 disclosed that a RFP (Request for Proposal) for the establishment of a State-level technical cell as mandated by the scheme has already been floated.

The required City-level planning for Bhubaneswar and Cuttack is going to be completed by this November and the planning for the three other cities would be wound up by the end of this fiscal, said the report.

As per the report, steps have also been initiated towards establishing the mandated technical cells at the City-level too. But the time-frame, by which all necessary infrastructure would be in place, has been tentatively fixed for 2011-12.

Significantly, under the scheme Basic Service to Urban Poor (JNNURM), the BDA is currently working on construction of economically weaker section (EWS) flats for the Damana and Gadakana slums.

However, the total units to be built stand at 192 only. In contrast, the total number of slums in the City stands at a high of 377 with a total population of around 3.5 lakhs.

RAY, in fact, addresses the problem well as it aims at slum-free cities in the country.

The yojana not only brings the existing slums to the mainstream but also redresses the failures of the formal system that becomes the genesis of slums in big cities.

The State-level nodal officer and BDA vice-chairman DK Singh said the organisation is very eager to complete this huge responsibility entrusted to it by the government to see Orissa slum-free.