MCH chooses not to notify city slums

hyderabad: despite a government order on notification of slums in twin cities, the municipal corporation of hyderabad (mch) has deliberately been not acting on it with an intention to discourage people from holding more than one house depriving the genuine claimants of housing scheme benefits. of the 811 notified slums, as many as 403 slums were already denotified after having been developed by utilising funds provided by overseas development agency (oda).according to officials, there are over 200 slums which were yet to be identified and notified. “the people of developed slums continue to claim the benefits and tax revenue from them is very poor. notification and development were only encouraging some people for claiming more benefits,� a senior officer said. with the slum dwellers demanding individual houses, the officials have made it clear that they could only be provided one plus two structures as government land was scarce. in some cases where private land was involved, the amount spent on infrastructure development such as drainage, street lighting and roads was going waste as the private parties were claiming the land at later stages. the mch has spent about rs 20 lakh at annanagar, but the land was taken back by the original claimants through a court order. “land acquisition poses a major problem for the government. since the value of land is high, no one comes foward to part with land however good the amount may be,� a senior mch officer said. as oda stopped funding the slum projects, the corporation was forced to earmark 20 per cent of tax collection for slum development. according to andhra pradesh slum improvement (acquisition of land) act, 1956, areas which are a source of danger to public health, safety or inconvenience to the neighbourhood should be declared as slums and special attention should be paid to develop infrastructure in such areas.