Bhubaneswar: The state government plans to appoint an agency to conduct a survey of the urban poor and their housing requirements in the city.

The survey is expected to ensure smooth execution of various affordable housing projects under the Centre's Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana and the state's Housing for All scheme.

The agency will be selected through a bidding, which will make a survey of the demand of such houses in the city. It will then submit the report to the government, along with an action plan on how to execute the projects.

The state government has planned to create a stock of 20,000 such affordable houses for the urban poor in the city in the next three years. Besides, it has also planned to build 31,000 such houses across the state by the end of next year.

"We have already initiated the process to set up a city-level technical cell to monitor the projects. The cell will have officials from various public and private agencies," said a housing and urban development department official.

"The new consultant will also be a part of the cell but mostly work on field-level. We are doing everything possible to achieve the target on time," the official said.

The Bhubaneswar Development Authority and the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation have already begun the process to execute two such housing projects at Chandrasekharpur and Satya Nagar, whereas three more are in the offing at Nakhara, Gadakana and Pahala. The demand survey for these projects has been done by some other agencies.

The new agency will conduct surveys for the upcoming projects.

Besides, the agency will also conduct a demand survey for construction of the houses under beneficiary-led construction of the yojana.

Beneficiary-led construction is a component where eligible beneficiaries for the projects took up the construction of the houses by themselves with financial help from the government.

"We had undertaken a drive in May to select the beneficiaries for the affordable houses. Later, we distributed more than 100 work orders under the beneficiary-led construction programme," said mayor Ananta Narayan Jena.