Contractor booked for ‘substandard’ housing

Hari Om,DM Kanpur,recommended the termination of services of junior engineer Bharat Tripathi to the managing director of UPRNN. The DM also recommended the suspension of project manager,UPRNN,PP Jaiswal. Both recommendations have been made on the charges of dereliction of duty.

Under the BSUP scheme of the JawaharLal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM),7,802 houses are to be constructed in 48 slum areas in Kanpur. The project was started in 2009 and till date,more than 4,000 houses have been handed over to the beneficiaries.

Each house will be constructed at a cost of 1.86 lakh,of which 50 per cent is given by the Union government,40 per cent by the state government and 10 per cent by the beneficiary.

District Urban Development Authority (DUDA) is the nodal agency for the project,but the construction is being done through contractors selected by UPRNN. On Thursday,the DM held a sudden inspection of the houses in Loharan Bhatta,Raja ka Purva and Shivraj Singh ka Purva. He found that the construction work was substandard. Against the norm of nine inches,some walls were only four inches wide. The quality of cement was poor. Also,some the houses were being built for those not included in the list of beneficiaries.