Maha Cabinet clears construction of housing complexes for workers from closed 58 Mumbai textile mills

Mumbai: In a serious bid to reach out to the workers from the 58 closed Mumbai textile mills ahead of the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, the Maharashtra Cabinet gave nod to construct housing complexes for them in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR).

The Cabinet approval was necessary to implement the government’s ambitious plan to provide homes to textile mill workers which has been lingering on for many years.

As per the eligibility criteria assessed by the state labour department nearly 80,000 houses will be required to be built for the textile workers in the MMR.

The construction of these 80,000 homes will be possible through building new housing complexes on government land, through joint ventures with private landowners under the Prime Minister’s Awal Yojana and other schemes and also through the option of construction of homes under Prime Minister Awas Yojana or other such schemes on the approved layout of the private developers.

The Cabinet cleared these three options for the construction of housing complexes for the textile mill workers.

The Housing Department will complete necessary formalities such as selection of land, issuance of tenders to appoint developers/contractors, scrutiny of technical and financial bids and make necessary follow-ups with the concerned departments.

The Chief Secretary-led high-powered committee will finalise bids, negotiate with developers/contractors, release necessary approvals and fix the price of housing units. The construction of housing complexes for textile mill workers will get sops currently available under the Prime Minister Awas Yojana.

The grant required for the construction of these homes will be shared one-third each from the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation corpus and from the Maharashtra Nivara Nidhi which comes under the jurisdiction of state housing department. The government will have to bear the burden towards 1/3 grant in the budgetary provision of Rs 1,500 crore.

A total of Rs 5,000 crore will be needed towards the grant for the construction of housing complexes for the textile workers. The Cabinet cleared the disbursal of Rs 3,000 crore to the state housing department for the same. If the government will have to make a budgetary provision of Rs 1,000 crore it will have to be made under a separate head while the remaining will come from the BMC and Maharashtra Nivara Nidhi.

The Housing Department will take necessary action to provide homes to textile workers who want to take homes outside MMR or in other districts.

--IANS

sj/dan