In order to identify the numbers of buildings under the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) scheme that are dilapidated and require immediate repair work, the SRA will appoint private agencies for their project-monitoring services to understand the quality control of various building works of the SRA.
“The agencies that the SRA has decided to rope in are professionally competent, and only those that are approved National Accreditation Board for Certification Bodies (NABCB) will be able to apply for the tendering process. We have floated tenders for the appointment of agencies for the same and are expecting to complete the process of appointment by January end,” said a SRA official.
Earlier this month, legislators in the state Legislative Assembly had alleged that developers are giving inferior quality of houses to slum dwellers to save on construction costs. In reply, Prakash Mehta, state housing minister, stated that the SRA will be carrying out a quality audit of the buildings built where slum dwellers are residing.
Mr Mehta had also assured that the available land in SRA projects would be used equally for both the rehab component of slum dwellers and for the commercially exploitable segment. Meanwhile, a senior SRA bureaucrat, who did not wish to be named, said, “The audit of quality is to ensure that rehabilitation buildings are constructed of a quality that can withstand for longer period.
The residents at times are not capable at maintaining buildings, as they never had to do so while residing in slums. We have to take extra care in the rehab segment because in the saleable segment the buyer himself is quite aware of quality issues and enforces his concerns as he is the paymaster, but this is not the case in the rehab segment.”
