VIJAYAWADA: Exactly 1,01,396 families in 13 districts of Andhra Pradesh notionally stepped into their own houses for the time on Monday. The state government of Chandrababu Naidu organised an en masse housewarming ceremony (griha pravesam) for all such houses, built with the aid of the Union government as part of the Housing for All policy.
Chandrababu Naidu unveiled a pylon in Vijayawada in commemoration of the occasion and his cabinet colleagues presided over similar programmes in 13 districts. Government officials said the project cost Rs 1,242.11 crore.
The ‘Housing for All’ programme aims to build 17.40 lakh houses in urban and rural areas with an outlay of Rs 50,000 crore under different schemes.
The chief minister said the programme will be taken up in three phases in Andhra Pradesh.
“Today, we have completed the first phase and one lakh houses were given to beneficiaries. We will conduct a similar programme on Sankranti and again on June 8. I want to ensure that all housing projects taken up in the state are completed by 2019,” he said.
Monday being the anniversary of Gandhi, the state government organised several programmes to drum up the Swach Bharat initiative. Naidu said the state would gain the Open Defecation Free certification by March 31, 2018. All of the state’s 110 urban local bodies have won that status and in the six months, rural parts of the state would get there.
The chief minister said another 21.6 lakh individual sanitary latrines remain to be built and 8,383 villages have yet to reach ODF status.
He also launched the ‘Pradhan Mantri Chandranna Bima’ scheme, an insurance scheme for workers in the unorganised sector.