Somanna eyes a slum-free B'lore

Somanna eyes a slum-free B'lore

Hemanth Kumar. Bangalore

Housing minister V Somanna has set a daunting target of providing houses for all slum-dwellers in the next four years. About 24,000 houses would be built in Bangalore this year.
Work has already begun for construction of 18,000 houses for the poor in the city of which 2,000 would come up in his own constituency of Govindaraja Nagar.
"I have drawn up plans to build about 24,000 houses in Bangalore this year under various schemes. Funds will not be a problem as the state government has allocated over Rs800 crore for housing in the budget. If all goes well I want to change the face of 400 slums in the city. For the first time, the government is even giving them assistance to relocate temporarily till the completion of new houses," he said. A team of officials headed by principal secretary in the housing department which recently visited Andhra Pradesh to study the successful housing scheme there would submit its action plan in a week.
Four divisional committees headed respective regional commissioners would be constituted to implement the project which envisages building about 14 lakh houses in the next four years across the state to make Karnataka free of hutments, Somanna said. A co-ordination committee of heads of all the civic agencies, BBMP, BDA, BWSSB, BESCOM and BMTC would be constituted to ensure integrated approach for speedy completion of slum rehabilitation programme.