Relief for Tsunami affected families

CHENNAI: Seven years after tsunami, there is hope for 566 families of Nochikuppam as they will be allotted a new house under the Emergency Tsunami Reconstruction Project (ETRP) of the World Bank at Okkiyam Thoraipakkam under the hire-purchase scheme. Sources said the decision to allot houses to the beneficiaries by December 2012 came after a meeting of higher officials last month. Interestingly, the list included 256 families who would be allotted house on a priority basis, as their names appeared in the primary list of tsunami-affected people. They will receive  this benefit despite having documentary proof of residence at Nochikuppam after the cut-off date of January 1, 2005.The tenements were part of the proposal of Tamil Nadu Slum Clearance Board, which had proposed to construct new houses under the World Bank-assisted ETRP Project to replace 2,862 tenements from Nochikuppam to Srinivasapuram that were affected by the tsunami in 2004, sources said.Interestingly, it was earlier proposed to construct 816 tenements at a cost of Rs 46.80 crores in Nochikuppam and the tenders had been finalised in November 2009. A total of 994 beneficiaries were selected, which included 734 from tenements and 260 from huts. “Up to January 2011, about 419 families have been vacated and shifted to the temporary shelters,” sources said. The project landed in troubled waters after the beneficiaries protested demanding an additional house for each of them irrespective of their eligibility criteria, besides complaining of discrepancies, sources addded. In June 2011, a fresh attempt was made to rectify the discrepancies in the beneficiaries list and inclusion of names that were left out from the list. A new list of 566 beneficiaries was prepared and it was found that 256 petitioner names had appeared in the Collector’s list of 2005 and that the remaining 310 names did not figure in the list.Though their names had not appeared in the Collector’s list,  the 310 petitioners would be allotted one house at Okkiam Thoraipakkam under hire-purchase scheme, as vacating the tenements and demolition of the existing blocks could not be carried out to commence the construction work, the source added.