Roy calls for planned low cost housing

New Delhi, Feb 16(ANI): Minister of State for Urban Development Saugata Roy on Tuesday said a careful planning of urban cities is of utmost importance for evolving low cost housing.

Addressing a seminar on "Low Cost Housing" here, Roy said the optimum utilization of all available resources would tend to give the most economical solution to this grave problem.

The two-day seminar, which concluded today, was organized by the Indian Buildings Congress, and about 300 builders, engineers, architects and constructions experts participated in the event.

Roy further mentioned that housing has become a major problem all the world over, but it is much more acute in the developing countries including India.

"The two main reasons for this are the higher rate of growth of population and secondly the rapid industrialization of such countries and the consequent large-scale urbanization," Roy said.

He said that unless urgent measures are taken both at the national and international levels to mitigate the housing problem it will assume crisis proportions with grave adverse consequences on the survival and well-being of the people, as well as the process of economic and social development.

"It is therefore very necessary for developing countries to give emphasis on low cost housing," he said.

Roy also highlighted that India is confronted with housing problem of a very high magnitude, and said that total housing deficit in the country is 24.71 million, out of which 21.78 million is particularly for economically weaker sections of the society alone.

"The rising cost of the components of housing is the one of the reasons of deprivation of basic services to major chunk of the population of India," Roy said.

Elaborating further the Minister stated that low cost housing is a concept, which deals with effective budgeting and use of techniques to achieve reduction in the construction cost by making use of locally available materials along with improved skills and technology without compromising with the strength, performance and life of the structure.

"There is a misconception that low cost housing is suitable for only sub-standard works and that they are constructed by utilizing cheap building materials of low quality. Cost of construction can be achieved by selection of more efficient material and by adopting improved designing," he added.

Roy informed that keeping the aspects in view, the Government has been promoting research in the fields of housing and construction activities. (ANI)