The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : KCR offers assistance for film workers' housing project

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, May 04, 2005

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

KCR offers assistance for film workers' housing project

Staff Reporter

WELFARE ON THE AGENDA: The Union Labour Minister, K. Chandrasekhar Rao, having a look at the proposed housing project at Chitrapuri in Hyderabad on Tuesday. - Photo: Satish H.

HYDERABAD: The Union Labour Minister, K. Chandrasekhar Rao, said that he will take up with the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, the issue of diverting funds from other welfare sectors for a housing scheme for workers of the film industry near Nanakramguda on the city outskirts.

After inspecting the proposed group housing project of the Andhra Pradesh Cine Workers Cooperative Housing Society at Chitrapuri on Tuesday, Mr. Rao noted that the local film industry workers welfare fund had a corpus of only Rs. 1.5 crore which was too meagre to provide subsidy to 2,000 quarters of workers which may come up at the 67-acre project site.

Another 2,000 quarters are meant for cine artistes and others directly involved in film production.

Offers intervention

He, therefore, offered to lead a delegation of the Cine Workers Federation to the Prime Minister to divert to the project a part of the Rs. 130 crores, which got accumulated in the welfare funds of limestone, iron-ore and dolomite workers welfare fund. The fund of these sections of workers was found to be surplus.

Mr. Rao said his Ministry would also explore other avenues to enhance the welfare fund of cine workers by increasing the cess on high-budget films and bringing telefilms into the ambit of cess.

A committee was already constituted two months ago to study how best to improve the fund.

Mr. Rao struck a discordant note when asked if his gesture to help ground the project did not amount to soft-pedalling his earlier charge that the Telugu film industry made fun of the Telangana dialect.

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