First instance where workers will get homes within the mill property
First instance where workers will get homes within the mill property
Over 5,000 mill workers will soon have houses built on the 16 mill lands located in the city. Housing for mill workers on private mills has been a long-pending issue that was resolved after chief minister Devendra Fadnavis decided to allot fungible FSI to mill owners free of cost.
With use of fungible FSI, the workers will get 400 sq ft of houses. This is the first time that the mill workers will get housing on mill lands.
“The mills included in the list are Kohinoor, Century, Khatao, Swan, Tata, Spring, Mumbai mill at Lower Parel, Mumbai mill at Mahim, New Great Mill, Shrinivas, Bombay Dyeing, Mathuradas, Madhusudan, Mumbai Mill India no 3, Digvijay, Jam mill and Eastern Spring,” an official from the Urban Development Department said.
Earlier, the state had decided to rehabilitate the mill workers in Mumbai Metropolitan Region. However, rehabilitating workers on the 16 mill lands had been pending for a long time as the developers were not ready to give them houses free of cost.
The chief minister finally resolved the matter by deciding to give fungible FSI so that both tenants and developers would benefit from the decision. The fungible FSI can be used for making flower beds or construct bigger houses for tenants. Premium is not applicable for the fungible FSI and can be used for free sale component.
“We were pursuing the matter of the 16 mill lands which are situated on private lands. The mill owners were not ready to construct houses free of cost for the workers. According to the old rules, they have to pay premium to get FSI. We approached Mr Fadnavis and convinced him to give fungible FSI to these lands, which he agreed,” Congress MLA from Wadala, Kalidas Kolamkar said. He was pursuing rehabilitation of 648 families in his constituency at Spring Mill land.
Just a day ago, the state government had announced 350 sq ft of houses in Dharavi redevelopment by using fungible FSI and also told to start tendering process for floating tenders.
Apart from these houses, the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) had also announced to provide 4,800 houses for the workers aiming to make available a total of 10,000 houses this year.
There were 1,48,067 applications when lottery was drawn for the first phase in 2012. The government would ask Mhada and MMRDA to build more houses in MMR.
