Bhubaneswar: Providing people-centric Urban Governance and improving the liveability of the cities have been the priorities of the Odisha government.
The Urban Transformative journey has experienced significant strides in recent years.
To take these further, Rs 7914 crore is provisioned in the Budget 2023-24 for Housing & Urban Development (H&UD) Department, to further enhance the liveability of the urban areas by providing all advanced civic amenities across all wards in all 115 Urban Local Bodies of the state.
The impact in transforming lives is evident from the quantum jump in the budgetary allocation for urban development which has gone 28 times from Rs 276 crore in FY 2000-2001 to Rs 7914 crore in FY 2023- 2024.
The key thrust areas in this year’s budget are Urban Water Supply with Rs 2400 cr, Inclusive Urban Infrastructure Rs 2345cr, Decentralised Sanitation & Drainage Management with Rs 1307 cr and for Urban Housing Rs 609 cr.
It is the dream of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik to provide safe and clean drinking water through tap water house connection to every household; so far 85 cities including all five corporations namely Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Berhampur, Sambalpur & Rourkela have achieved tap connection to 100% households and the remaining 30 cities would achieve this by December 2023.
Drink from Tap mission a 5T initiative is implemented to bring the water supply service standards on par with international cities like New York, Tokyo, Singapore and London. Puri & Gopalpur have become India’s 1st and 2nd cities to achieve this distinction and the implementation is going on in another 21 cities which will be completed by March 2024 benefiting 40 lakh urban population.
Execution of the Drink from tap mission will be completed in Berhampur by June 2023 & in the remaining cities including Bhubaneswar, Cuttack & Rourkela by December 2023.
An amount of Rs 2400 crore is provisioned for the Urban Water Sector for FY 2023-24. WATCO bagged the distinction of Global Water Leader Award in the Global Water Summit held in Spain in 2022, Odisha has achieved the distinction of being the 1st state in the country to provide directly drinkable water at the consumer taps round the clock.
Recognizing the crucial role of slum dwellers in building and sustaining cities, Odisha is implementing JAGA Mission, the World’s largest slum land rights and upgradation programme, this government is implementing JAGA mission to provide Land Rights and transform the slums into Adarsh colonies.
Chief Minister Patnaik’s thought is “We Value People More than Land” and eviction is not the way but empowerment to deal with the slum issues so far more than 1.73 lakh slum families are granted land rights certificates and another 1 lakh families living in the five Municipal Corporations, Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Berhampur, Rourkela and Sambalpur will be issued Land Right Certificates by December 2023.
To improve the liveability of slum dwellers, slums are transformed into Adarsh Colonies with all infrastructure, amenities and services at par with the rest of the cities.
So far 725 slums are upgraded as Adarsh Colonies and two towns namely Hinjilicut and Digapahandi have achieved slum-free status.
The state is fast moving towards achieving slum-free status in all the ULBs by March 2024.
Odisha’s JAGA mission as World’s largest slum land rights and upgradation programme has successfully demonstrated that eviction is not the way to resolve the slum issues rather empowerment is, by winning two UN Habitat- World Habitat awards in 2019 and 2023.
Under the 5T Governance initiative of the CM for creating a “Happy Odisha Healthy Odisha” the Government is implementing the Mukhyamantri Karma Tatpara Abhiyan (MUKTA), an Urban Wage Employment scheme for the urban poor which is implemented across 115 ULBs of the state through Community Partnership model involving the Mission Shakti SHGs and the Slum Dweller Associations.
As many as 52,000 projects have been extensively implemented which include advanced civic amenities, city beautification, rainwater harvesting etc. So far 62 lakh person days have been generated.
MUKTA scheme has bagged two Global Accolades i.e. the WRI Ross Prize for Cities 2022 and the Guangzhou International Award 2021.
The Government have also planned for developing Kalyan Mandaps across all ULBs of the state under Unnati. Municipal Corporations will have 10 each, for Municipalities 4 each and for Notified area councils 2 each. Total 400 approximately Kalyan Mandaps will be constructed.
Furthermore towards making citizen-centric motorable roads of 1200 km identified across 115 ULBs will be transformed into Paver Roads at an investment of Rs 500 cr in 2023-24.
Rejuvenating the Water Bodies in Urban Odisha and creating public places for recreation more than 2,000 large water bodies will be transformed by adopting nature-based treatment and to be implemented in partnership with Mission Shakti SHGs under the AMA POKHARI initiative. Rs 120 cr investment will be made under this initiative.
