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| Karra addresses Beijing conference on housing' | | 'Use innovative technology to make housing affordable' | | Beijing | Apr 1
Jammu and Kashmir Minister for Finance, Housing and Urban Development Tariq Hameed Karra has said the greatest challenge facing the housing sector today is to promote environment-friendly green building construction.
Speaking at the inaugural session of the 4th International Conference on ‘Intelligent, Green and Energy Efficient Building’ being jointly organized here by the Housing Ministry Government of China and Construction Industry Development Council (CIDC), India, Karra said the task of developing the urban areas will never acquire its true meaning and significance if the concept of Green Buildings is not pursued significantly in the modern housing infrastructure development. He said in tune with its policy of improving the urban amenities, the Government of India has embarked upon a massive Urban Renewal Mission titled JNNURM, and the Government of Jammu & Kashmir is working on Green Building Guidelines and several other issues of construction industry reforms jointly with CIDC.
Karra, heading the Indian delegation at the Conference, said the Government has formed a new Housing Policy with the primary objective of ensuring affordable shelter to all by the year 2010. He said the strategy to achieve this is by creating enabling environment for larger participation of private, private-public and co-operative sectors in housing development. He said the action plan also envisages creation of a new legal and regulatory regime for housing, redefine role of Housing Boards and Development Authorities, improve access to market credit, and the most important of all is to innovate housing architecture and technology. He said CIDC, as the apex organization of the construction industry in the country, has a major role to play. He said the first and the foremost thing would be to develop trained human resource and CIDC and the Assam University, Silchar, have already embarked on this plan by starting various housing-related technical courses.
CIDC, Karra said is the apex organization of the Construction Industry in India, established by the Planning Commission, Government of India jointly with the construction industry. He said CIDC, besides having a major role in developing the required human resource for the construction industry, is also entrusted with the job of harmonizing the contract conditions for various public and private procurements including Urban Renewal Missions, developing institutional arbitration and conciliation systems, promoting Green and Environmentally Sound Technologies apart from other sector related reforms both in India as well as internationally.
Urging the globally acclaimed Green & New Technology Product Manufacturers and service providers to increase their Indian operations for uniform technology promotion across the globe, Karra said with wider involvement of the players the Green Building Construction would get enough impetus resulting in a universal acceptance of the movement.
Referring to the housing scenario in the state, Karra said Jammu and Kashmir is the most urbanized among the hilly states of India. He said the urban population of the State has grown from 8.5% in 1951 to 24.8% in 2001. He said the urban growth during 1981-2001 (98.4%) was higher than the national average (64.2%). He said the net effect of such explosive growth has led to deficient and even absence of basic civic amenities in many areas. He said the secondary effects of this urbanization are the weak and deficient Urban Regulatory functions, fragmented urban management leading to multiple line departments performing municipal functions. He said the ultimate result is very low user charges which further get aggravated with a lower level of their realization leading to lack of resources for Municipalities.
Karra said in Jammu and Kashmir 93% households own their homes, 4.3% live in rented accommodation, 7.78 hundred thousand people live in slums, 10,792 are homeless, 22.7 % households live in one room tenement, 26.2% live in two, 18.7% in three and 28.7 % in four or more room accommodation out of which 48.3% houses are mud masonry, 8.7% have tap water and 23.1% water closet latrines. The total housing shortage is 4.5 hundred thousand dwelling units, out of which half are in urban areas.
Karra expressed the hope that the recommendations that would emerge at the culmination of the conference would, with their application in due course; help improve the urban housing scenario in India.
From the State Government, Commissioner Jammu Municipality, Jeet Lal Gupta and Vice-Chairman Srinagar Development Authority (SDA) Mohammad Aslam are also attending the conference. |
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