Cricketer Kapil Dev and actor Nagma during a walk for tsunami victims in New Delhi on Sunday. (PTI)

Port Blair, Feb. 6: The cabinet has finalised the design for 10,100 intermediary housing structures needed to accommodate around 40,000 people living in relief camps in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

The deadline for these homes, which are to last the 18 months it will take to build permanent dwellings, is April 15, when the monsoon is scheduled to arrive.

Three basic designs have been created by the National Institute of Disaster Management, in keeping with the seismic activity in the region, to be spread across 47 clusters on the islands. For the Nicobarese population, the units will accommodate four families with a common kitchen.

Units for six families with a separate bathroom will be used mainly in Little Andaman, while there is also a provision for a two-family unit, explained Naresh Kumar, secretary, housing.

Construction of 21-22 sq mt units, as far as possible, will be by the families themselves, to ?keep them active and provide employment?. The administration will provide the material needed for each unit, and the affected families will construct them, for which they will be paid minimum wages.

The material is to reach the islands by the first week of March, and the working drawings are expected to come in ?within two days?, Kumar told a sub-committee of NGOs today, who have been encouraged to take up housing projects, as long as they adhere to the government-approved design. However, the NGOs have also been warned not to ?over-commit? due to the tight schedule forced by the rains and the existing logistical challenges of the territory.

The permission for the NGOs to work on shelter came through yesterday.

The intermediary structures, according to government estimates, will cost around Rs 1 lakh each.

A number of NGOs suggested cheaper temporary shelters and immediate work on the permanent homes. But time will be required, stressed Kumar, to start work on the homes, as preliminary investigations to identify land that can support habitation and is safe in terms of seismic activity and cyclones will take a few months.

Transport costs to bring raw material from the mainland to the islands push costs up considerably, as will the wages to be given to the communities that will construct the dwellings.

The forest department will also work with the NGOs to make local resources like bamboo available as far as possible.

Pre-fabricated huts that have been used in the southern-tsunami affected states on the mainland, and were also previously recommended here, have been rejected as they are considered unsafe in seismic zones due to their large number of joints.