After jobs, Yogi’s UP govt plans to come up with low-rent housing for returning migrants

The plan is to develop houses and multi-storeyed complexes near urban centres, under the public-private partnership model.

Representational image of construction work | Dhiraj Singh | Bloomberg

Lucknow: The Yogi Adityanath administration in Uttar Pradesh has already announced its plans to provide employment to returning migrant workers, and now, it’s making arrangements to give them low-rent housing as well.

A directive issued by the principal secretary of the urban development department states that this department and the State Urban Development Agency (SUDA) will collaborate to build houses on community land in villages, under the public-private partnership model.

The directive mentions that various municipal bodies will be allocated land from the government’s land pool to construct housing and provide affordable houses and complexes (multi-storeyed buildings) for the returning migrants. For this, a list of gram sabha land near urban areas will be earmarked and tabulated.

In addition, private institutions who can build complexes on their own land and provide them to such persons at low rental rates are also being identified. They will build 1- and 2-BHK homes for the workers to rent.

Sources in the urban development department told ThePrint that there are several reasons for adopting the PPP model, foremost among which is that it won’t take as much government expenditure or manpower to execute the project. The sources said the scheme is modelled on the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, and its main objective is to provide housing to workers who have nowhere to live in urban areas, where the government is trying to arrange employment for them too.

Around 25 lakh migrants have returned to the state after being stranded in different parts of the country during the Covid-19 lockdown, according to state government sources.

Loans for street vendors, skill mapping for labourers

Among the measures designed to provide employment to returning migrants, the UP government has now announced that it will provide a loan of up to Rs 10,000 as working capital for street vendors.

For this, the principal secretary urban development has written to district magistrates and heads of administrative divisions, and also sought a list of vendors from municipal corporations and district urban development agencies.

Apart from this, a plan has been formulated to provide employment to all returning migrants through the Craftsmen/Workers (Recruitment and Employment) Welfare Commission.

A herculean task of skill-mapping 14.75 lakh migrant labourers and other workers has already been completed. The largest group, of 1.51 lakh workers, are from the construction/real estate field.

There are over 26,000 furniture and fitting technicians, a similar number of building decorators, 12,633 domestic caretakers, and 10,000 drivers. There are also 4,680 IT and electronics technicians.