The
Union Minister for Rural Development, Panchayati Raj and Drinking Water and
Sanitation Chaudhary Birender Singh addressed the National Workshop on Housing
for All-Rural in New Delhi today. The Minister of State for Rural Development
Shri Sudarshan Bhagat also addressed the National Workshop on Housing for All
(Rural).
Shri S.M. Vijayanand,
Secretary, Department of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj, Shri Amarjeet
Sinha, Additional Secretary, Department of Rural Development, Shri Rajeev
Sadanandan, Joint Secretary, Department of Rural Development were present on
the occasion. other Participants in the Workshop included Secretaries of Rural
Development from States, Engineers, implementers, planners, architects and civil
society organisations.
Chaudhary Birender
Singh emphasised in his speech that Housing for all is a priority area for the
Modi Government. He Said, “Housing for the poor is a priority area for our
Government. The Government has declared the intention to provide a good quality
house for all by the year 2022. As part of this, we have launched the Pradhan
Mantri Awaas Yojana (PMAY). Approval for the urban component had been given
in 2015 itself. I am pleased to share with you that rural component has
also been approved by the Cabinet on 23rd March, 2016.”
He further said that the
entire rural housing programme has been revamped in Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana.
Subsidy provided by the state and central government has increased by more than
70%. From Rs.70,000, the allocation has now gone up to Rs.1,20,000. In
hilly and difficult areas it has increased from Rs.75,000 to Rs.1,30,000. In
addition, the Government has also made available cost of unskilled labour
for 90 days (95 days in difficult areas) from MGNREGA and another Rs.12,000
from Swachh Bharat Mission funds for Toilets. The wages in NREGA have also
been revised recently. All these taken together would ensure that a rural
beneficiary gets more than Rs.1,50,000 for house construction.
In the years from 1985
to 2015, around 3.5 crores houses have been constructed. Our aim under
Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana-Gramin is to construct 1 crore houses in three
years, Chaudhary Birender Singh added. This is a challenging task.
We can meet this task only with the support of elected representatives and
officials at all levels, especially at the Panchayat level. We need to revamp
systems and work hard to deliver the results promised by the Government, the
minister added.
The Central Government
will spend Rs.81,975 crores on rural housing from now on till 2018-19. In
addition, States would also be spending more than Rs.50,000 crores as their
share. The annual allocation from Central Government will go up from
Rs.10,025 crores to more than Rs.27,000 crores. The infusion of
resources of this magnitude will be a game changer in the rural housing scene
and the rural economy.
The NDA Government has
revamped MGNREGA and increased the allocation and mandays. Like MGNREGA,
Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana also generates employment and wealth in rural
areas. Except for steel and cement, all materials used in rural housing such as
wood, sand, bricks are produced in villages. The labour for construction is
also local.
The beneficiary also
has the option to avail loans upto Rs.70,000 from primary lending institutions.
National Housing Bank and NABARD are the regulators for housing sector lending.
Bringing transparency in the selection of beneficiaries. The data from the
Socio Economic Census conducted in 2011 will be used. Pradhan Mantri Awaas
Yojana will be the first programme to use data from SECC to select
beneficiaries for individual oriented benefit schemes. The list of
beneficiaries will be available in the public domain. The criteria for
selection is also well known and transparent. The most vulnerable people,
selected on the basis of deprivations identified in the SECC, will get priority
in the allocation of houses. Therefore, the selection of beneficiaries will be
based on transparent norms applied to data available in the public domain. This
will make selection of beneficiaries in Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana extremely
transparent, Shri Birender Singh said.
This list derived from
SECC data will be presented in the Gram Sabha, to be held as part of the ‘Gramoday
se Gram Bharat Uday’ programme from 21st to 24th of this
month. If there are complaints, the Gram Sabha may correct the list after
recording their reasons. Once this process is over, the list of all the persons
who will be covered by Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana will be available in next
few months. Since the list is prioritized, beneficiaries will be aware when
their turn would come and plan accordingly.
Construction of so many
houses in such a short time could generate shortage of building materials. Production
of building materials such as making bricks from fly ash and soil stabilized
earth blocks are approved activities under MGNREGA. There were
presentations on the use of Bamboo in the workshop. The Ministry will examine
whether bamboo related activities can also be covered under MGNREGA, especially
in the North East.
The Rural Development
Minister said, “Our Government has invested heavily in infrastructure. Construction
is the fastest growing employment sector. There will be a lot of demand for
masons, even from rural areas. Unless we increase the supply of good quality
masons, we will not be able to complete the targeted number of houses.
Therefore we have started a ‘Masons Training Programme’. There are National
Occupational Standards for different construction activities such as
concreting, bar bending and brick laying etc. But a rural mason has to do all
these activities. Therefore, we have created a new occupational profile
called “Rural Mason” which includes parts of all these skills, including skills
in constructing a toilet.”
The quality pack for
Rural Mason has been approved by the National Construction Skills Development
Council of India. It is on their website for comments and would be approved
shortly. This will make it possible for the training to follow a nationally
approved pattern. It will also make it possible to certify the rural mason. I
would like to thank the Ministry of Skills and the National Construction Skills
Council of India for making this possible.
A standard kit for the
training materials and other training aids was launched during the workshop.
Meanwhile pilot training of rural masons using this curriculum has started in
Jharkhand and Maharashtra and will soon commence in Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and
Uttarakhand. The experiences of training masons were shared in the workshop.
Ministry of Rural
Development is partnering with the National Disaster Management Agency to
develop modules to train masons on disaster resilient construction methods. Housing
typologies along with manuals for construction will soon be available in all
the States. Today the Ministers launched 3 of these typologies for Maharashtra,
Meghalaya and Tripura. Training modules for masons to build houses according to
these designs will also be developed and will be used in constructing
government buildings to demonstrate their features to the people.
Rural Technology park has
been set up in NIRD. The information collected in the surveys from the states will
be available there. All this information and what will be developed later will
also be available on the “Rural Housing Knowledge Network” website that was
launched today.
In order to avoid
delays in the payments to beneficiaries delayed, all administrative and
financial transactions will be through the electronic platform, ‘AwaasSoft’.
The bank account, Aadhar number, mobile, NREGA job card are entered in the
software at the time of registration. When the sanction is issued on AwaasSoft,
the money will be transferred electronically to the bank account of the
beneficiary through Finance Ministry’s software-PFMS.
For proper monitoring of
the rural housing programme, “Awaas App”, a mobile app was launched today.
The photograph taken on this app is geo-tagged and time stamped. Photos will be
taken at different stages of construction and uploaded on Awaas Soft. The first
photo will be that of the empty plot before construction. This would be the
reference point for photographs of all the different stages that are taken and
will ensure that houses are completed on time. The Centre will also provide
administrative expenses which are being used by many states to employ technical
staff to monitor quality and progress.
For technical support,
a National Technical support agency will be set up as a housing division of the
National Rural Roads Authority. This will provide technical support to the
Central Government, support states in setting up their state level and district
level technical support units, arrange for training of technical staff, develop
operational and technical manuals and independently verify construction.
Rural housing for the
poor is undergoing a paradigm shift. Resources have been increased
substantially. With the subsidy itself a poor person can construct a good
quality house. There is an additional stress on quality. Attractive and low
cost designs are available. Masons who work on rural houses would have received
formal training. The administrative and monitoring processes have been
streamlined. Transparency is paramount in all components of the programme, the
Minister informed the participants.
Shri Birender Singh
said that a supporting and enabling environment is available for the successful
launch of the rural component of the Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana. However, to
make it a success, we need the support of people at all levels - elected
representatives, officials at Central, State and district levels, technical
experts and civil society organizations. The most important contributor is the
beneficiary. With everyone’s support, I am sure that we will be able to achieve
the ambitious targets of this programme, he concluded.
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YSKataria