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Rs 5,000-cr corpus proposed for slum development

M. Somasekhar

NEW DELHI, July 10

THE Ministry of Urban Development has firmed up a proposal to create a corpus of Rs. 5,000 crores for an Integrated National Slum Development Programme (NSDP).

The Ministry has, as part of the proposal, urged the Planning Commission to allocate Rs. 1,000 crores, while HUDCO would provide Rs. 4,000 crores as loan, according to Mr. Bandaru Dattatreya, the Minister of State with Independent charge.

The proposal, which aims at benefiting nearly 1.5 million slum-dwellers every year, is being put forth to the Union Cabinet very soon, the Minister told Business Line.

The Ministry is also urging the Centre to transfer the powers of fund allocation for the NSDP schemes to its purview for effective implementation. Though it is the nodal Ministry, it can only monitor the progress of the programme, while the actual fund a llocation to various State Governments is done by the Planning Commission and the Department of Expenditure, under the Finance Ministry.

The scheme was launched in 1996-97 and so far, a total of Rs. 1,374 crores has been provided to various States. However, the utilisation has been only Rs. 533 crores. The implementation aspect of the programme came under criticism at a review meeting hel d as part of the State Housing Ministers' conference held in the last week of June, he said.

Even the Standing Committee on Urban and Rural Development in its 23rd report expressed unhappiness at the present structure and felt that for better implementation, all the aspects of funding and monitoring should be vested with a single Ministry.

The basic objective of the NSDP is to provide basic facilities such as water supply, sanitation, primary education, healthcare, adult literacy and non-formal education facilities. The Centre launched the programme in August 1996 to provide an additionali ty to the normal Central assistance to the States and Union Territories for slum development.

The Ministry has also given high-priority for slum development in urban areas in the draft National Slum Policy document which has been circulated for eliciting comments from a cross-section of experts, Mr. Dattatreya said.

A major thrust of the Policy was to provide for secure land tenure for the slum-dwellers, which meant a `patta' or document about land ownership. In this direction, the country was proud to be the launching place for the global campaign for secure tenure , an initiative of the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (UNCHS) on July 16, in Mumbai, the Minister said.

Mr. Dattatreya, who led a team of officials from the Ministry, HUDCO, BMPTC, and the Rural Development Ministry on a six-day visit to Tanzania, Kenya and Zanzibar, early this month, met the senior officials of the UNCHS at Nairobi and discussed two major campaigns being launched by it _ the secure tenure and the good urban governance.

The Indian side also participated in the Tanzania International Trade Fair and exhibited low-cost building materials and manufacturing technologies, which evoked considerable response from the African countries. African countries spend up to $3 billions in imports of building materials and technology for their housing and infrastructure projects, the Indian effort was to try and get a slice of it in future, said Mr. V. Suresh, Managing Director of HUDCO.