Ministry of Housing & Urban Poverty Alleviation and Prime Minister’s 15-Point Programme for the Welfare of Minority Communities

The Ministry of Housing & Urban Poverty Alleviation is concerned with following two points of the Prime Minister’s 15-Point Programme for the Welfare of Minority Communities:

Implementation of USHA Scheme

The Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation is implementing the Central Scheme of ‘Urban Statistics for Human Resource and Assessments (USHA)’ which aims at the development and maintenance of national database, MIS and knowledge repository relating to urban poverty, slums, housing, construction and other urbanization-related statistics in line with the national emphasis of strengthening statistical base of policies and programmes. Its key objective is to support the Ministry of Housing & Urban Poverty Alleviation and other Ministries with an information base and knowledge inputs for the purpose of planning, policy-making, project design, formulation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation, particularly in the context of programmes relating to urban poverty, slums and housing.

Population in Slum Areas

As per estimates of the Committee set up by Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation under the Chairmanship of Dr. Pranob Sen, Principal Adviser, Planning Commission (former Secretary, Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation, and Chief Statistician, Government of India) the slum population in the country is expected to touch 93.06 million by 2011.

Funds to Convert Dry Latrines

In consultation with technical experts technological options in the form of twin-pit latrines, septic tanks, and bio-digesters including underground sewerage systems were made available as recourse and alternatives for dry latrines for stopping the obnoxious practice of manual scavenging. Integrated Low Cost Sanitation Scheme (ILCS) provides for conversion/ construction of low cost sanitation units through sanitary two pit pour flush latrines with superstructures and appropriate variations to suit local conditions (area specific latrines).