Site-less people lay siege to MCC

Mangalore, October 24: Hundreds of site-less and houseless people in the city on Monday staged a protest in front of Mangalore City Corporation demanding the distribution of sites.

Led by Democratic Federation of India, the protesters laid siege to the MCC building for over an hour.

Addressing the protesters, DYFI District President Muneer Katipalla said that the State Government and the local bodies have totally neglected the poor who do not own sites and houses.

The State government has been distributing land to industries and cites the technical problems when it comes to the distribution of land among the poor. Under Asharaya scheme, no sites have been distributed to the poor for the last one decade, he said.

“With the rise in real estate boom, and commercial complexes, the rent for houses and land value have increased drastically, thus putting the site-less and houseless to hardship”, he pointed out.

The MCC had identified 1,950 site-less beneficiaries in its survey way back in 2003. However, when the MCC carried out the resurvey recently to find out the whereabouts of 1,950 site-less beneficiaries, they could get only 108 beneficiaries as majority of them have changed their address with the increase in rent for houses.

Mr Katipalla said the DYFI had submitted about 4,000 applications for sites in February, 2011. However, the MCC has not taken any concrete measure towards distributing sites to the poor. The MCC has been showing four to five acre land to be distributed among the poor for the last several years. The Housing Minister has been stating that under Vajpayee Housing Scheme, the government will construct 4,000 houses in every Assembly constituency. However, no effort has been made in this regard so far in the district.

He said there are more than 25,000 families who do not own sites in MCC limits and more than one lakh families in the district. The State government has failed to implement Rent Control Act effectively. He said “Our concern stemmed from the fact that the number of houseless was growing across the city with each passing day and the setting up of industries has pushed up house rents beyond the reach of the common man and wage earners.

He said that industries have contributed to spurt in land rates making it difficult for individuals to buy land and construct houses.

“House owners too are raising house rent arbitrarily without adhering to any rationale and their actions are guided by the fact that the government has scrapped the Rent Control Act 15 years ago”, he lamented.