Odisha sanctions over 54,000 houses for poor

Bhubaneswar: The Odisha government has sanctioned 54,275 houses for the poor and economically weaker sections of society spreading across 113 Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) in the state.

The decision comes after the clearance from the Sanctioning and Monitoring Committee of the Odisha Urban Housing Mission (OUHM) under the Chairmanship of Chief Secretary Aditya Prasad Padhi.

Directing officials in this regard, Padhi asked the department to strengthen field-level supervision and expedite rate of completion of the houses. This apart, he also instructed officials to take stock of progress at regular intervals by fixing targets.

The sanctioning committee has sanctioned 5,133 houses in the meeting and released around Rs 156.40 crore as project cost by connecting each beneficiary in a week for facilitating completion of the houses at the earliest.

Beneficiaries construct their houses and money is released into their account.

Housing and Urban Development Secretary G. Mathivathanan said that the process of financial assistance begins within two days of uploading the photos of the house under construction.

OUHM Mission Director Suresh Chandra Dalai informed that around 29,797 houses were sanctioned in three phases between July 2016 and May 2017.

Till now, work order has been issued against 24,117 houses with a record achievement of around 84 per cent.

The sanction order of an additional 20,345 houses has been sent to ULBs earlier during November this year. The ULBS are preparing for issue of work order after due verification of land details of the beneficiaries.

With inputs from IANS