Bhubaneswar: The state government has sanctioned 54,275 houses for economically weaker sections of the society living in 113 urban local bodies.

This was revealed from the state-level sanctioning and monitoring committee of the Odisha Urban Housing Mission, which met on Friday under the chairmanship of chief secretary Aditya Prasad Padhi.

Padhi directed the department to intensify the field-level supervision and expedite the rate of completion of the houses. He further instructed to fix officer-wise target at the level of urban local bodies and take stock of the progress at regular intervals.

It was decided to connect each beneficiary almost in a week to facilitate completion of the houses. The houses are built by the beneficiaries themselves and money is released to their bank account.

Housing and urban development secretary G. Mathivathanan informed that fund support to the beneficiaries was being provided at the earliest within two days of uploading the photos of the houses under construction. Each house is being geo-tagged. So far, Rs 103.5 crore has been released to the beneficiaries with zero pendency for payment.

The chief secretary directed the department officials to make the fund release more comfortable. Accordingly, it was decided that henceforth Rs 40,000 would be released to the beneficiary at the level of foundation laying, and Rs 60,000 after completion of the plinth. Another instalment of Rs 60,000 would be released for roof casting and finally Rs 40,000 would be released for finishing the house construction in all respects.

Mission director Suresh Chandra Dalai informed that from July 2016 till May 2017 around 29,797 houses were sanctioned in three phases. Till now, work order had been issued against 24,117 houses (around 84 per cent). The sanction order of additional 20,345 houses was communicated to ULBs during November.