MoHUA missions played key role in fight against COVID

Various missions under the Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs played a stellar role during the COVID-19 pandemic and implemented several measures to ensure the country’s fight against the pandemic and ensure ease-of-living for citizens, said a press release issued by the ministry on January 11.

Soon after the first phase of the lockdown, a revised version of the Swachhata-MoHUA app was launched to enable citizens to get their COVID-related complaints redressed by their respective ULBs. The app was re-launched with nine additional categories of complaints specific to COVID-19.  Over 1.5 lakh COVID-related complaints have been resolved on the app with a resolution rate of 87 per cent.

More than 50 smart cities transformed their Integrated Control & Command Centres (ICCCs) into COVID-19 war rooms to enable collaboration with various Government departments.

AMRUT Mission helped in improving public health and hygiene during COVID-induced lockdown and around 15 lakh water-tap connections and more than 9 lakh sewer connections were provided since lockdown, according to the ministry.

PM SVANidhi scheme for the urban street vendors was launched in June 2020 for providing affordable collateral-free working capital loan to street vendors to resume their livelihoods that were adversely affected due to the lockdown. This scheme targets to benefit over 50 lakh street vendors

In line with Prime Minister’s call of ‘AtmaNirbhar Bharat‘, Affordable Rental Housing Complexes (ARHCs) as a sub scheme under PMAY-U, was approved to provide ease-of-living to urban migrants/poor in Industrial Sector as well as in non-formal urban economy to get access to dignified affordable rental housing close to their workplace. So far, 29 states/UTs have signed MoA (Memorandum of Agreement) for implementation of ARHCs.

Around 20,000 houses under the AHP vertical of PMAY-U were used as COVID facilities. The Credit Linked Subsidy Scheme (CLSS) for Middle Income Group (MIG) under PMAY-U was extended to March 31, 2021 as a measure under ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ initiative. Extension of CLSS for MIG will benefit 2.5 lakh Middle income families mobilising an investment of Rs 70,000 crore in financial year 2020-21.