Housing schemes grind to a halt

Rajahmundry: Construction of houses under various schemes including Indiramma Housing Scheme, Indira Awas Yojana and others  meant for the poor, has come to a grinding halt in the state and it is not known as to when the new dispensation will unveil its new housing policy as the state is reeling under severe financial crisis in post-bifurcation scenario.

Both the previous Telugu Desam and Congress regimes constructed a large number of houses  under various welfare schemes and they even vied with each other to gain upperhand in as to who  constructed more number of houses during their respective regimes. However, as the  Congress was in power for the two consecutive terms for a period of 10 years, it took lead in  the numbers.

Telugu Desam after assuming power, is  yet come up with any policy on housing issue. This resulted in utter confusion among the officials involved in taking up housing projects like AP Housing Development Corporation and others. They maintain that there is no word from the state government so far on the issue. Moreover, there is no major allocation of funds in the budget to complete the already started units or to take up the construction of new units.

The housing schemes are dogged in a series of  allegations of graft, misappropriation of funds and allocation of single or multiple  units to the party functionaries instead of the eligible poor.

However, the APHDC authorities are busy in carrying out Aadhaar seeding  of  the beneficiaries who were allotted housing units for a period of 10 years between 2004 and 2014. In Godavari districts alone, nearly 6.2 lakh beneficiaries exist as of now.  The authorities say that the main objective in taking up Aadhaar seeding is to identify the ineligible persons who were allotted the housing units and re-allocate such units to the genuine beneficiaries. In addition to this, the authorities are also going to take up geo-tagging of all these  houses and once this exercise gets completed, anyone can easily identify the location of the housing unit by its coordinates and its owner on the world map. A photograph of the  house with its beneficiary in the frame will also be taken.

The state government is going  to engage a private agency having technical expertise to train the government officials  to carry out this exercise soon. The data thus collected will be posted on government website for ready reference.

East Godavari housing project director D. Selvaraj said, “There is no construction of  houses at present and we are preoccupied with Aadhaar seeding of the beneficiaries of the district.”