NAGPUR, January 15: The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) has signed an agreement with Nagpur-based National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) to design basic infrastructural facilities to resettle 3,600 families squatting in South Delhi.The families will be put up at a 60-acre plot of fallow land at Jaunapur near Delhi. The settlement will house about 18,000 people.The Mayor of Delhi, Yog Dhyan Ahuja, Additional Commissioner Manjit Singh and some members of the corporation were in Nagpur on Thursday. They came to NEERI and finalised the project's details.The Additional Commissioner pointed out that every year four lakh people were coming into Delhi, the city beat even Mumbai which has a high immigrant population.Mayor Ahuja added that about 25 per cent of Delhi's population, some 30 lakh people, lived in slums.The Mayor said the Delhi administration was trying to come to grips with the growing number of slums in the Capital. Ahuja said 46 resettlements had already been established around Delhi. The effort has been to start resettlement colonies at sites close to industrial areas or places that promise employment to dwellers.Rehabilitated slum-dwellers are offered a package. The 340-sq ft dwelling given to each family costs about Rs 44,000. Of this, Rs 29,000 is paid by the local authority whose land has been cleared of the slums, Rs 10,000 comes from the state government and the beneficiary has to pay just Rs 5,000.NEERI's job is to come up with a localised plan for water management, liquid and solid waste treatment and sewerage. Singh said the difference between creating local facilities and carrying the municipal facilities to the settlement runs into several crores of rupees. The institute is charging a fee of Rs 30 lakh, Singh said, which will be added to the total cost of the project.In the next two months NEERI will submit a preliminary report to the MCD. The actual project with cost estimates will be worked out later, he said. He also said that MCD has asked NEERI to help implement the plan on the field. He hoped the settlement would be completed within 14 to 16 months. The Delhi Mayor and his team will next visit Mumbai to examine slum development schemes being carried out in Dharavi.
