40% JNNURM Home Vacant, 20% Sold or Rented..!

Above 2 years after the government handed over the keys of nearly 8,000 low cost houses developed under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) housing scheme to the beneficiaries, a staggering 40% of the houses are still lying unoccupied, reports TOI.

This is even as nearly 20% of the houses have been put on rent or /  sold off by the beneficiaries while the remaining 40% are occupied by persons that the government officials are yet to identify. These are the findings of a recent sample survey carried out by the Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation (GVMC)'s department of urban community development (UCD) on the 7,964 houses handed over to beneficiaries.

The GVMC is planning to take up a comprehensive survey soon to identify the occupants of the remaining 40% houses to find out if they are genuine or / bogus beneficiaries.

"The sample survey revealed that most of the houses were not occupied by the people who were handed over the keys. We have decided to conduct a comprehensive survey by visiting the houses during morning hours to check the occupants & if they are genuine beneficiaries. We will also serve legal notices to the bogus occupants on the spot itself. However, all this will take two to three months," UCD Project Director, Mr. MNA Patrudu.

According to GVMC officials, the government had sanctioned 15,320 homes under JNNURM to GVMC since 2009. However, GVMC decided to construct only 14,267 houses and said it would not build the remaining 1.053 houses primarily due to land problems.

And so far, GVMC has been able to complete the construction of only 7,964 houses in 43 layouts and has handed over the keys to the beneficiaries since mid 2011. Another 4,757 houses are under various stages of construction.

The cost of each housing unit ranges from Rs. 1.65 lakh to Rs 1.81 lakh, depending on the size of the home. The beneficiaries of JNNURM low cost housing project are selected based on three criteria: urban poor, rehabilitation and relocation.

However, it was learnt that the reason for most beneficiaries shying away from occupying the houses was the lack of basic infrastructure such as water, power, drainage, streetlights and even recreation facilities.

According to Mr. Pragada Srinivasu, Co - ordinator, Association for Regional Tribal Development for Urban Wing (ARTDUW), most of the houses were not occupied by the beneficiaries due to various reasons such as lack of basic amenities, the fact that the housing sites are very far from city and lack of proper transportation facilities close to the housing project.

One of the beneficiaries of the JNNURM housing project at Lankepalem, Mr. P. Sannasamma, who also lodged a complaint with GVMC officials about lack of power and water connections in her house, said: "The GVMC commissioner assured me that it will take a month to put in place the power supply. My family had to suffer a lot of problems last summer due to lack of power and water."

Admitting that the civic body was flooded with complaints from JNNURM housing beneficiaries on the lack of basic amenities at the weekly grievance cell, GVMC commissioner MV Satyanarayana claimed that they had provided all basic amenities like as power, tap water, streetlights to the allotted houses at the time of handing over the keys to beneficiaries but many of these were damaged due to non-occupation of houses.

"Nearly items such as streetlights, water taps and the like worth Rs. 10 lakh were stolen from housing sites that are not yet occupied. We plan to restore the facilities at all allotted houses within two months," he said. 

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