Malaysian tech for Hadapsar slum rehab

The Pune Municipal Corporation has launched the construction work of tenements at Hadapsar under the Integrated Slum Rehabilitation Scheme, funded under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission.

The Pune Municipal Corporation has launched the construction work of tenements at Hadapsar under the Integrated Slum Rehabilitation Scheme, funded under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission. The distinctive feature about this project is that the PMC is using a Malaysian technique of aluminium shuttering for r einforced cement concrete RCC construction, which is enabling them to work at a faster pace and to use the same equipment repeatedly.

Civic officials, including city engineer Prashant Waghmare, superintendent engineer special projects V R Patil briefed the mediapersons during a visit to the slum rehabilitation tenements on Wednesday.

Patil said, 8220; The aluminium shutter is a lightweight product, which, a single man can easily lift and one floor of construction could be completed in a week8217;s time, whereas the conventional shuttering methods is more time-consuming. The repeatability of this product is around 200 cycles. One it is done, there was no need to plaster the walls and the thickness of the wall remains uniform.8221;

8220;Even though, it takes a long time for the aluminium shutters to be installed, it is speeding up the construction and reducing the requirement of labour. Though the cost of the material cannot be called cheap, it benefits during mass construction activities,8221; he added. 8220;At the Hadapsar project, the construction work for 4,800 tenements is going on and the work started in January 2008 and is supposed to be over by December 2010,8221; said Waghmare.

As per the sanction of the Central Sanctioning and Monitoring Committee CSMC, PMC is implementing the slum rehabilitation scheme at five different locations spread across the city including Hadapsar, Lohegaon, Kothrud, Kondhwa and Warje. At the Hadapsar project, residents from the Ramtekdi slum will be rehabilitated. The work at Warje, too, has started off. However, the lands at Kondhwa and Lohegaon are yet to be acquired by the PMC.