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Hyderabad’s underbelly
Posted by Srini Uppala | December 3, 2007 | 317 views
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Loading ...Ever wondered where slum dwellers disappear, at times even overnight, when their shacks are razed? Well, they are bundled up and driven out and dumped into the city outskirts in places called ‘housing colonies’ for the weaker sections.
There are about 220 such colonies in Hyderabad district ‘housing’ over a lakh people in 20,000-odd houses, say officials. These people have been displaced from various places over the last decade, ever since the city started growing. An additional 20,000 such units (houses) are in the offing.
Ghousenagar and Nandanavanam are such colonies. Neither really pass off as housing colonies but appear more as human dump yards where people picked up from different locations over the years have been residing. In some cases, they were picked and bundled off into a garbage truck and deposited in these places at midnight.
But, while they did get a roof on their heads, it was in airless rooms with little ventilation, several kilometres from the city, where they are even deprived of their earlier sources of livelihood.
At Ghousenagar, about 159 families picked up from Indira Park about a decade ago with the promise of a roof on their heads, live and another 92 families live in shacks.
At Nandanavanam, people displaced from the banks of Musi river were relocated about a decade ago, followed by those from Shivaji bridge. This project, that comes under Ranga Reddy district, houses an estimated 6,000 families.
The houses, at Ghousenagar for instance, appear at best structures in concrete with no semblance to a place fit for living. Built under the Valmiki Ambedkar Avass Yojana Scheme ‘VAMBAY’, a housing scheme, the residents here have lived the last ten years of their lives fighting poor living conditions, a clear indicator of it being the filth that flows between the houses and small areas outside the houses covered by saris that pass off as bathrooms.
Ghousenagar and even Nandanavanam have no bathrooms or toilets and the residents, comprising daily wageworkers, beggars and domestic helps, say they are perpetually falling sick.
“We could have lived there (Indira Park) itself,” says Shareefa, a resident of Ghousenagar, who grudges that a chunk of her measly earnings as a domestic help is spent on her commute from her residence to work. The only saving grace was a direct bus from Ghousenagar to Indira Park, where she still works. “They stopped the bus over a month ago,” she rues.
While Nandanavanam is a much bigger project, the problems faced here are much the same. People live huddled together in dingy tin shed halls (about seven such sheds here) with 30 families sharing the hall space.
While there are separate houses too, they were not enough to accommodate the growing numbers of displaced people here, says S Selvin Mary, of Chatri, a social group funded by Child Relief and You fighting for housing rights of the displaced slum dwellers. Selvin Mary adds that Nandanavanam has turned out to be a favourite dumping ground.
And living conditions deteriorate with each new set of slum dwellers getting dumped in such colonies. While the first set of people in Ghousenagar was fortunate to at least get houses, so what if they were poorly planned with missing parapets that led to many accidental falls resulting in one death and a few broken limbs, the next set of displaced people comprising 92 families, this time from Falaknuma did not even get that and have been living in shacks ever since.
Some like V Venkatesh claim they have made payments too for these houses, a demand draft payment of Rs 6,000 followed by monthly instalments of Rs 250 but haven’t got a house yet. These people living in shacks are now being asked to set tents in the nearby graveyard to make way for new blocks.
And the litany of woes of residents here only got longer when it was plunged in darkness last week with the electricity connection going dead.
As per the VAMBAY scheme, each house was budgeted at Rs 60,000 for its construction. The new budget for the houses is Rs 80,000 under the JNNURM scheme. But, officials say that only 30 of the 220 colonies were found lacking in basic facilities such as toilets and bathrooms and requests for the same have been made, but only last year.
SOURCES:
Times of India
Topics: Dream Home, Govt Failures |
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