PATNA: The Bihar government has sought strong support from the Centre to promote a slum-free society in the state under the Rajiv Awas Yojana (RAY) announced in the Union budget in 2009.
Stating this here on Wednesday, state urban development and housing development (UD&HD) minister Prem Kumar, said: “The government wants to promote housing among the urban poor, street-sleepers, and homeless people. We will also like to accord property rights to slum dwellers to ensure that they stop living a nomadic life.
Kumar was addressing a national workshop on planning for slum-free cities here organized by the Regional Centre for Urban and Environmental Studies (RCUES) and supported by the Union ministry of housing & urban poverty alleviation.
“The growing shortage of urban land and housing has aggravated the problem of slums in Patna recently. To properly address the problem, the city’s outskirts should be used as land to provide housing to the homeless,” the minister said.
The event witnessed participation of urban local body officials from Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Orissa, Sikkim, Uttarakhand, and Bihar.
Bihar UD&HD special secretary K Shukla elaborated the state government’s plan to alleviate the street-dwellers through a comprehensive housing and rehabilitation policy.
Shukla stressed the need for providing housing to the slum dwellers, homeless and the street-dwellers along with basic amenities such as water supply, sewage, drainage, and social infrastructure facilities in slums and low-income settlements adopting a “whole city” approach.
Shubhagto Dasgupta of the Support for National Policies for Urban Poverty Reduction (SNPUPR) made a power-point presentation on the various activities of RAY.
Michael Slingsby, also of SNPUPR, elaborated on how slum-free city planning had helped countries like Thailand, Vietnam and other Asian nations to alleviate slum dwelling. Slingsby, who has worked on rehabilitating slum dwellers in Bangladesh, Bangkok, Hanoi (Vietnam) among others, said: “The government should focus on constant consultation with slum dwellers while rehabilitating them. Community participation has wonderfully worked in other countries and we should also follow the same model.”
Read more:Â State keen to promote slum-free cities under RAY – The Times of India