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Minister for Urban Employment and Poverty Alleviation, Kumari Selja has emphasized the need to organize the slum dwellers into co-operatives for empowering and facilitating them in getting housing and related ammenities. She said that the co-operative is the ideal approach to mobilize the organizational and managerial skills and petty savings of slum dwellers to meet the needs for their own shelter and to live in improved human settlement. "A multi-purpose co-operative of slum dwellers which can be owned, organized and managed by themselves appears to be an appropriate vehicle to deliver shelter facilities and also cater to enterprises at household level, education and training for skill improvement, delivery of health and hygiene services, leading onto improvement in the slum settlement," she added. She was addressing the delegates at the National Seminar on Cooperative Housing for Slum Dwellers, here today.
Referring to the urgent need to facilitate easy access to land, finance and urban infrastructure support to these co-operatives at affordable rates, Kumari Selja urged state governments and their development authorities, municipalities to make land available to such co-operatives at affordable prices and suggested that speculation could be prevented by imposing restriction on transfer of land allotted for a period of 10 years. "Tenure to slum dwellers for their co-operatives could be given by the state government either in situ or through relocation", she added. Kumari Selja urged financial institutions and banks to give concessional finance to co-operatives of slum dwellers through a mechanism of cross subsidy and indicated that the government may subsidise the cost of such housing construction to some extent through Valmiki Ambedkar Awas Yojna.
Referring to UPA government’s commitment on urban renewal & in situ development of slums to the extent possible, Kumari Selja advised National Co-operative Housing Federation of India to strengthen the co-operative movement in social housing and involve more woman so that the worst affected lot are taken care of.
Chief Minister of Delhi, Smt. Sheila Dixit said that non-availability of sufficient land for housing activity is a reality we have to accept and advised the organizers of the seminar to consider the high rise buildings concept for the lower income group through co-operative societies. She also said that in situ development of slum is a necessity and co-operative housing societies can play a key role in addressing the housing needs of millions of such people in the country.
Among others present on the occasion were Secretary, Ministry of Urban Employment & Poverty Alleviation, Smt. Chitra Chopra, President of National Co-operative Union of India, Shri S.S. Sisodia and Chairman of NCHF, Shri Deep Chand Sharma.
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