Nagpur: The Nagpur Municipal Corporation will build 392 flats for sanitation workers at Mouza Nari without paying the contractor in cash, and will set up a separate planning cell to stop development works from slipping.
The standing committee, chaired by Shivani Dani-Vakhre, approved the ₹91.45 crore housing scheme at its meeting. The flats will come up on a public-private partnership model across 14 buildings on 11,109.629 square metres, and the contractor will be paid in transferable development rights, not money.
Executive engineer Sunil Uike said this may be the first urban local body project in the state to be executed entirely through TDR. The contract has gone to M/s Sandeep Developers Private Limited. The firm had asked for a 10 per cent advance in TDR to buy material and meet other costs; the administration approved 7 per cent, equal to 6,014 square metres, with the rest to be released in stages as construction progresses.
The project is part of the Basic Services for Urban Poor scheme, under which 544 houses have already been built. The committee also approved an additional ₹1.28 crore to raise the sewage treatment capacity at the housing complex by 200 kilolitres a day, because the area has no main sewerage network.
On the planning cell, Dani-Vakhre said the absence of a dedicated planning department was delaying both the preparation and the execution of development works. She directed the additional commissioners to begin the process of setting it up.
She also questioned a proposal to distribute T-shirts to students in NMC schools with only five months left in the academic session, asking what purpose the exercise served at that point.
The TDR route is the part other civic bodies will watch. Under it, a builder is given development rights he can use on another plot or sell, instead of a cheque from the corporation. For a cash-strapped municipal body, it converts a capital expense into a land-based instrument; for the contractor, it is only worth what the TDR market will pay.
Nagpur's civic budget has been under pressure, and the corporation has been pushing PPP models for housing and infrastructure. The standing committee's approval is the first step; work on the ground, and the release of the remaining TDR, will decide how quickly the 392 flats come up.
Sanitation workers' housing has been a running demand in the city. Under BSUP, the 544 completed houses were the first tranche.