Bhubaneswar : The Odisha government has sanctioned 54,275 houses for the economically weaker sections of society across 113 Urban Local Bodies (ULBs), an official said on Friday.

This was decided by the Sanctioning and Monitoring Committee of the Odisha Urban Housing Mission (OUHM) under the Chairmanship of Chief Secretary Aditya Prasad Padhi.

Considering the progress in the matter, Padhi directed the department to intensify the field-level supervision and expedite the rate of completion of the houses.

He also directed to fix an officer-wise target at the level of ULBs and to take stock of the progress at regular intervals.

The committee sanctioned 5,133 houses in the meeting at an estimated project cost of around Rs 156.40 crore and decided to connect each beneficiary in a week for facilitating completion of the houses.

The houses are constructed by the beneficiaries themselves and money is released to their account.

Housing and Urban Development Secretary G. Mathivathanan said that money support is being provided within two days of uploading of the photos of the house under construction.

So far, Rs 103.5 crore has been released to the beneficiaries with zero pendency for payment at OUHM level, said the official.

OUHM Mission Director Suresh Chandra Dalai said that from July 2016 to May 2017, around 29,797 houses were sanctioned in three phases.

Till now, work order has been issued against 24,117 houses thereby recording an achievement of around 84 per cent. The construction of these houses is in different phases.

The sanction order of an additional 20,345 houses was communicated to ULBs during November this year. The ULBS are preparing for issue of work order after due verification of land details of the beneficiaries.

—IANS