core sector communique

Steps to Bring Down Cost of Houses in Urban Centres

The Minister for Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation Kumari Selja has said that the National Urban Housing and Habitat Policy 2007 lays, inter alia, emphasis on promotion of cost effective, environment-friendly building materials and technology with a view to achieve savings in the use of scarce conventional materials like Cement, Steel, Burnt Bricks, Timber etc that could bring down the cost of housing. The policy, further focuses on promoting and incentivizing decentralised production with the available local Building Materials.

In a written reply in the Rajya Sabha today she said, Building Materials & Technology Promotion Council (BMTPC), an autonomous organization under the Ministry has been involved in propagation of cost effective, environment friendly Building Materials & Technologies through demonstration construction, organisaiton of seminars, capacity Building programmes, Exhibitions and Awareness programmes on cost-effective technologies all over the Country. A number of technologies developed by the R&D institutions and proved to be cost effective, environment friendly and sustainable such as flyash based bricks/ blocks, simple prefab system for slab/ roofing, ferrocement components, wood substitutes etc. are being promoted by BMTPC. Through the BMTPC, the Ministry is also encouraging development and use of locally available material like bamboo Engineered Bamboo Components and structures are being promoted is bamboo giving areas, especially in North-Eastern Region.

She said, using R&D institution’s developed technologies, BMTPC has constructed few demonstration structures in different parts of the Country which shows the reduction in the cost of construction. BMTPC has also developed design package with alternate cost effective technologies for different regions of the Country and has planned to showcase the cost effectiveness of the technologies with State Government’s willingness and support for adoption at large scale.