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Earlier this year, the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) in Mumbai published the names of 150 builders who had defaulted on their rental payments to slum dwellers of slum rehabilitation and redevelopment projects. The authority did so in an attempt to hold them accountable for their actions. Along with publishing their names, the authority demanded that all defaulters remit the pending money immediately and submit an affidavit within a month to the authority citing reasons for the delay. However, in the three months that followed this announcement, only a fraction of the payments is cleared. The total outstanding was said to have been approximately Rs 700 crore of which only Rs 20 crore has been cleared so far.
Since its inception, the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) has provided homes to over 2 lac families in MMR over 24 years. As per SRA data, there are an estimated 12.5 lac slums in the city with over 65 lac individuals residing in them. For the last couple of years, the SRA authorities have struggled to revive stalled and dead projects. Some of these projects were halted as early as 2005, leaving several poor people in a lurch.
To give such stalled schemes some momentum the state government is now adopting a three-pronged approach to revive and complete over 500 of such stalled redevelopment projects. The state government has approved a special amnesty scheme that will allow financial institutions to infuse funding into dead projects, it has allowed for the creation of a joint venture with MHADA where SRA will pay rent, and it has begun appointing developers through a tendering process.
Under the proposed amnesty scheme, financial institutions can come on board and restart stuck or dead projects through fund infusion. Builders who wish to take on such projects will have to bid for the tender and submit themselves for scrutiny by the SRA authorities. Upon successfully securing a tender, the builder in question must pay up to 11 months' rent in advance and submit post-dated cheques for rent for three years.
Currently rent for slum tenants varies between Rs 10,000 per unit to Rs 20,000 per unit. On average, up to 5 individuals reside in one unit. The quantum of rent is usually agreed upon by the slum dwellers and builders together. Due to the non-payment of these 150 builders, over 50,000 families have been adversely affected.
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