Type of project
Government Housing Scheme
Location
Veli village, Trivandrum, Kerala
Role played by the member
Designers and implementers
About the project
Mr. Shankar believes that slums are parts of the habitat that are vibrant and full of living dynamics. The slum dwellers are the people who are responsible for physically running the city infrastructure and hence are a very important part of the city. The urban structure sustains them and they support the urban life. However, town planners have always talked about slum clearance. Considering the fact that without the human resource form the slums, the city life would be paralysed; HTG believes that, the slum dwellers have a right to live in the city. They believe that the best thing to do would be to improve their quality of life in the same place that they have been staying in. Which means, improving the slums where they are.
The Pozhikkara Slum Rehabilitation Project at Veli, in Trivandrum, which is a part of the total housing scheme, was allotted to Habitat. HTG's role was to provide designs, estimates and construction. Begun in 2001, the task was to rebuild the 55 odd houses, which were shanties made of temporary construction material such as bamboo and thatch. Initially there were 72 families in the settlement, however only 55 had the land rights and hence were priority. The process of allocation of rights to the others is underway.
The Pozhikkara slum is situated between a boat club and the sea, on the south side of Veli, which is a tourist village. The informal and unorganized fishermen settlements on the beachfront were not very conducive to the future tourism development plans of the Government. Hence, for maintaining the tourism value of the region there was a lot of pressure on the government to reposition the fishermen in decent houses. One of the state officials, also the secretary in the State Tourism Department, helped speed up the project clearance.
|
