All Koraga families in DK may get houses

The thousand odd primitive tribal families which have been dwelling in Dakshina Kannada district may soon have a reason to rejoice.

The government is contemplating to provide houses to all the 1,126  Koraga families in the district at a cost of Rs two lakh each, as against the initial demand of the families to provide Rs one lakh each. The entire project is planned at Rs 12 crore. Out of the Rs two lakh, Rs 1.5 lakh will be provided by the Government while Rs 50,000 is most likely to be provided by a public sector company.

The Koraga families in the district since several years have been demanding for pukka houses. Though the ITDP provides Rs 50,000 and Rs one lakh for construction of houses, the project could not bring about much change because of glitches in implementation. At the same time, Koragas expressed their contempt over the disparity in the stipulated funds and said that it is practically impossible to build house using Rs 50,000 so they must be provide Rs one lakh each.

This demand was brought to the notice of the District-in-Charge Minister Krishna J Palemar couple of months ago during a programme.

Palemar promised to do the needful in this regard. Unlike most elected representatives who would otherwise promise and forget, Palemar took up the issue seriously and held talks with a particular public sector company. According to sources, the company has agreed to provide Rs 50,000 per unit. It is said that construction of 800 houses will be taken up on priority basis and Palemar has strictly told the Zilla Panchayat officials to complete the work within six months. The construction work is most likely to be handed over to Puttur based consultancy named Master Plannary.

“The house will not be just a concrete block. It will be well planned and well designed, with all necessities like drainage etc taken care,” said Palemar speaking to Deccan Herald.This project, if started and completed on time, will set a model at the national-level because such an effort and project has never been done for the primitives tribes anywhere in the country, say the organisations working for the cause of Koragas.