Odisha: Rental housing complex for construction workers in 10 cities

The Odisha government will establish rental housing complex in 10 cities of the State to solve the problems faced by construction workers in getting rental accommodation at places of their work.

The rental housing complexes will come up at Rourkela, Angul, Paradip, Dhenkanal, Cuttack, Bhubaneswar, Sambalpur, Vyasanagar, Berhampur and Jharsuguda and help accommodate migrant construction workers.

The housing complexes will be 100-bed in capacity in the five municipal corporations and 50 beds in the rest. So far, 19 patches of land have been identified by the Collectors and civic bodies and feasibility reports prepared. To speed up the implementation, Central and State PSUs will be entrusted the work.

While rental housing complex would, to an extent, help the migrant workers, the Labour and ESI Department has brought about some significant changes in the norms to bring all unregistered construction workers under the ambit of registration process and therefore, under coverage of welfare schemes.

The Government has also extended the registration renewal validity from one year to three years so that those going outside do not face any problem. Currently, 17.76 lakh construction workers are registered while 11,732 of them are migrant in nature.

The Odisha government has placed Rs 40 crore with Odisha Urban Housing Mission (OUHM) for establishing rental housing complexes in the State.

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