Jaga Mission of Odisha govt receives international acclaim

Bhubaneswar: The Jaga Mission, an unique model for up-gradation of urban slumsof Odisha government for providing land rights to slum dwellers has received internationalacclaim .
Odisha has been conferred with the World Habitat Award-2019 and Asia-Pacific Housing Award-2021.
The Odisha Government had launched the special campaign for transforming the urban habitats
to Biju Adarsha Colonies.
Accordingly, around 3000 slum habitats containing 168,141 slum households were identified through
a special survey named Urban Slum Household Areas (USHA) undertaken with geo-spatia ltechnology in NACs and Municipalities.
Out of this, 70,000 Households were granted in-situ land rights and 1,03,328 households were granted land entitlement certificates, Principal Secretary housing and urban development G.Mathivathanan said.
This was known from the workshop on creation of basic infrastructure for slum habitats inurban forest areas held on Monday in the convention centre of State Lokseba Bhawan .
Inaugurating the workshop, Chief Secretary Suresh Chandra Mahapatra said,“Provision of descent and livable habitats for urban dwellers is the dream of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik and, he has launched the path breaking campaign JAGA Mission for the purpose”.
Mahapatra said the first phase of the Mission focused on grant of land rights to the slum dwellers of the NACs and Municipalities and in the second phase,the focus is on up-gradation ofthe slums and mainstreaming those with the urban living”.
He directed the officials to ensure assured, descent and liveable habitats for the old slum dwellers
in all the urban bodies including the old slums in urban forest areas.
Such provisions would be a right solution to the challenging problems like encroachment,
evacuation, congestion, and poor living conditions in slums,the Chief Secretary said.
Additional Chief Secretary Forest, Environment and Climate Change Dr Mona Sharma said thata well thought out standard operating procedure (SOP) for up-gradation of urban slums has been worked out to resolve the problems relating to land rights and infrastructure development for the slum habitats
in urban forest areas.
The Chief Secretary has asked the department to complete up-gradation of all the identified slums
by the end of the current year.
According to Director Municipal Administration Sangramjeet Nayak as per USHA survey, 253 slums spread across 45 ULBs in 22 districts were found to be in urban forest land.
He said the problems cropped up with regard to settlement of land rights and laying of infrastructure for basic amenities due to the forest area.

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