[Jai]

Global tenders for Dharavi soon

15 May 07
Yogesh Naik
TOI Epaper

Mumbai: After a delay of several months, the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (Mhada) will finally issue global tenders for the Dharavi Redevelopment project by May-end. Dharavi is Asia’s largest slum.

State housing secretary Swadheen Kshatriya said, “Various issues related to the project had to be resolved. The tenders were to be issued in October, but several reasons caused the delay. We had a series of meetings with the residents of Dharavi since October. The tenders will be issued in two weeks, soon after CM Vilasrao Deshmukh okays our plan.’’

A housing department official said the entire Dharavi slum had been earlier divided into 10 zones. Now, the slum has been divided into five zones and each bidder will bid for only one zone. “We wanted a better and planned development, hence the housing department reduced the number of zones,’’ the official said.

From an initial cost of 5,600 crore, the project’s cost has shot up to Rs 9,000 crore. The redevelopment aims to resettle 60,000 families who will get houses of 225 sq ft each. The project is expected to be completed in five to seven years. The buildings for rehabilitation will be of seven storeys each.

Kshatriya said the residents of Dharavi had raised many valid points and the housing department had tried to accommodate some of their demands.

Mhada officials said nearly 28 months had been spent on giving final touches to the plan. “In the last few months, we had several discussions with NGOs and groups in the slum to figure out their needs.”