BHUBANESWAR: With over 31 lakh houses to be constructed under the Biju Pucca Ghar Yojana (BPGY), the State Government has decided to make extensive use of prefabricated building items for accelerating the pace of work and achieving target in time.
While the move will give a huge boost to the local enterprise in the sector, the State MSME department has charted out a plan for upscaling the existing units as well as facilitating establishment of units at the grassroots level to be able to cater to the huge demand.
The MSME department has enlisted prefabrication items such as roofs, walls, doors and windows, water tanks, tower bolts and aldrops along with fly ash bricks in the scheme for promoting industries in the sector. The existing units will be motivated to diversify into making these items and efforts will be made to establish new enterprise at the block-level.
In a bid to encourage industries and quicken the process of procurement, the department has also brought all the items into export promotion and marketing (EPM) rate contract fold.
“Currently, there are around 300 MSME units in the pre-fabrication sector in the State. There are many others which are engaged in related sectors like those producing cement poles and can be motivated into diversifying into the required jobs. Further, efforts would be made to promote establishment of new units at the block level,” MSME Secretary Panchanan Dash said.
A recent meeting on BPGY and IAY implementation, chaired by Chief Secretary G C Pati, had taken into account that 31 lakh kutcha houses had to be converted into pucca houses in the State. This entailed huge requirement of conventional raw material like 37.20 cubic metres of sand, 1,395 crore bricks, 139.5 crore laterite stones, 77.50 lakh quintals of rods and 15.50 crore cement bags.
About 7,30,812 houses sanctioned for the last fiscal are still to be completed under IAY and BPGY schemes. To address the shortage of building materials in rural areas, it was decided to accept prefabricated items and the MSME department was given the responsibility to bring them under EPM contract.
A proposal for engaging five thematic experts at the State-level, one district rural housing coordinator and data entry operator (DEO) each at District Rural Development Agency (DRDA) level and one rural housing officer and DEO at the block level has been submitted to the Finance department for proper monitoring and improving implementation of the housing schemes.