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Meet highlights plight of roofless

PUDUCHERRY: A special conference held here on Sunday brought to light the travails of the roofless in Puducherry town and its suburbs.

The Puduvai Maanila Veedatra Makkal Padukappu Iyakkam, which held the meet, urged the territorial government to allot five cents of land as house site for each of the roofless family.

According to a spokesman of the Iyakkam, as many as 62,000 families in the Union Territory had been dwelling in huts and 55 per cent of the families did not have toilet facility. Open defecation had led to serious health problems, he said.

Most of the families lived on the river banks and in areas adjacent to the railway track, drainage canals and lakes, he said.

The conference, through a resolution, urged the Central government to enact a law making the right to have houses for all families a fundamental right.

The meet also wanted the territorial government to earmark more funds for the slum clearance and housing boards. Through legislation, the government should ensure that one-third of the houses constructed by the housing board and cooperative housing federation was allotted to the poor, it said.

Stressing the need for implementation of the urban land ceiling Act, the conference urged the government to fix 500 sq. m as the ceiling and the surplus land should be taken over.

Another resolution urged the government to increase the subsidy on the houses constructed under the scheme named after Kamaraj to Rs.2 lakh and the beneficiaries should be selected through lot.

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