Delhi Based Consultancy Firm Blacklisted ???
Efforts can be taken to have a New Delhi-based consultancy firm blacklisted for preparing a faulty detailed project report for building houses for slum dwellers, Corporation Commissioner Anshul Mishra told the Corporation Council on Monday at a special meeting to discuss infrastructure development schemes to be implemented under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission.Mr. Mishra said this in response to charges from councillors, especially of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), that what was being implemented was different from what was given in the project report. “We found problems in the report and a re-survey can be done for 100 per cent identification of eligible beneficiaries. Efforts can be made to have the firm blacklisted even at the national level,” he said. Mr. Mishra said the firm had not done a proper survey and an inspection by the Corporation found that many beneficiaries identified by the project report did not have some of the criteria for eligibility.
Under the project, more than 26,000 houses – both independent and multi-storeyed tenements – would be provided at Rs.443 crore to people living in 173 slums. More than 9,000 families had been identified as those that needed to be re-located from water bodies. But, of the 12,000 the project report identified as eligible for houses at sites where they already lived, 5,000 of them were found ineligible by the Corporation’s inspection. Some did not possess pattas and some other houses were found to have been rented out. Their owners were not really economically weak.
So, the eligible ones among this 5,000 would have to be re-located along with the other 9,000. Of the rest 7,000 families, 3,000 had been issued work orders for building the houses. CPI (M) member S. Velmurugan complained that the Corporation had passed on to the beneficiaries its burden of meeting 30 per cent of the cost of each house. The Commissioner said arrangements were being made to provide a loan of Rs.20,000 to each beneficiary at an interest of four per cent. Mr. Velmurugan feared that the beneficiaries might not have good living conditions if houses were built on the sewage farm at Ukkadam.
