The Coimbatore Corporation would soon initiate measures to move to the Ammankulam tenements, the urban slum dwellers that lived along water bodies on encroached land.
The Tamil Nadu Slum Clearance Board (TNSCB) that had constructed the flats was ready to hand them over. Once the formal handing over was complete, the Corporation would start the process of handing them over to beneficiaries whom it had already identified.
The first to go and occupy the tenements would be the slum dwellers from the Highways Colony on Trichy Road, who occupied the Valangulam banks, said Mayor S.M. Velusamy a few days ago.
As and when the Corporation handed over the flats to the beneficiaries, it would mark the beginning of the next step in its efforts to rehabilitate the urban slum dwellers. At Ammankulam, 729 flats are ready for occupation.
Though the TNSCB had constructed 1,608 flats, it had to scale down the number after two apartments — 2B and 4B — sunk 50 cm and 25 cm triggering the need to demolish the top floors to restore stability to the structures. The sinking happened in 2010.
The Corporation had asked the TNSCB to construct the tenements under the Central Government’s Basic Services for Urban Poor programme of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission project. The Government had also given more than 50 per cent of the project cost. Mr. Velusamy said that the Corporation had also decided to handover 20 acres to the TNSCB to construct 5,000 flats to complete the housing project for the urban poor. The 20 acres it had identified was in Vellalore and part of the Vellaore compost yard land.
Once the construction of 5,000 flats was complete, it would take the total number of houses constructed to more than 12,000. The TNSCB had constructed 7,000 apartments at Ukkadam.
He added that the Corporation deciding to hand over the 20 acre was based on a request from the TNSCB.
