Rourkela: The Odisha State Housing Board office at Basanati Colony here functions as a skeletal entity with only two employees working with it.

As a result, house owners or land seekers find it difficult to get their work done here, and one has to travel to Bhubaneswar to obtain the no-objection certificate, no-due certificate, no-land certificate and get the transfer of ownership. "This is happening because we do not have the assistant administrative officer, the person who is responsible for doing all these works. The officer was posted here, but two years ago," said an official.

In the recent past, the board has hardly taken any project. The last project had been carried out in 2014 at Sundargarh, while the Chhend-III project in Rourkela had been over some 20 years ago.

Reacting to this, former district unit Congress chief Biren Senapati said: "This is really sad. The government should either close the office or make it properly functional. You cannot manage with just one junior engineer, while the executive engineer comes on only visits. This shows the state government's complete apathy towards Rourkela. The last project had been initiated and completed during the Congress rule some 20 years back."

Board secretary Gangahara Patra said: "I just joined the department two months ago and am taking stock of the situation. I was not aware about these complaints against the zonal office. I will take up the issues with the chairman. We have land issues, and are going to get land for the Chhend III and IV projects, for which the provisional permission is awaited from the government. Besides, a new project will shortly come up in Jharsuguda."