Kolkata: The rehabilitation scheme by the Housing department for the fire and subsidence zone affected people residing particularly under the Raniganj Coal Field areas has gained momentum with nearly 50 per cent of the work being completed till the end of the 2024-25 financial year.
Housing department sources said the scheme ‘RCFA’ targets construction of 10304 flats with 5060 being completed and ready for handover. 5084 flats are undergoing construction in full swing. These are coming up at three blocks — Andal, Daskeary and Bijaynagar-Daskeary. It involves a total cost of Rs 900 crore.
“The rehabilitation scheme will give affected people a safe place to live in and on a cluster basis, which can change the socio economic development of these places,” said a Housing department official.
Among the 5600 flats proposed to come up at Andal site, 4300 are completed with 1300s construction in progress. The department is hopeful of completing it at Andal by the Durga Puja this year.
In Daskeary (project named as JL 03), a village in Barbani, 600 flats out of 1872 have been completed and 1272 are under construction.
In the third site located at Bijaynagar and Daskeary (JL 02) that involves construction of 2672 flats, the progress has been extremely slow with only 160 flats being completed and a staggering 2512 under construction. Bijaynagar is a village in Jamuria.
The scheme is being presently implemented in these three big chunks of land with 4 storied buildings and 4 flats per floor — that is 16 flats per building of more or less 400 sq ft area.
Once the project gets completed, the Housing department will transfer it to the Asansol Durgapur Development Authority (ADDA) which will make the official handover to the beneficiaries.
The construction work technically started in 2018 and was temporarily stalled for nearly years due to Covid. Work started again from the end of 2021.