Seventeen families of the Onivayal Paniya colony, a tribal colony on the outskirts of Kalpetta municipality, will get possession of flats built by the Kalpetta municipality on Tuesday.
Chief Minister Oommen Chandy will open the flat complex, the first such a construction for tribesmen in the State, at 12.30 p.m.
The two-storey flat complex has been constructed at a cost of Rs .2crore by utilising Rs.18 lakh from the Municipality’s fund, Rs.95 lakh from the State Scheduled Tribes corpus fund and Rs.65 lakh from the Backward Region Grant fund.
Waterlogged huts and outbreak of epidemic owing to unhygienic conditions were a headache to the tribesmen as well as the district administration every monsoon. With the aim of putting an end to this situation, the municipal authorities have constructed a two-storey flat with modern amenities for the tribesmen, P.P. Ali, chairman, Kalpetta Municipality, told The Hindu . Two types of apartments - single and double-room apartments with 650 sq.ft. and 750 sq.ft. respectively, have been constructed on 17.5 cent of land beside the Kozhikode -Mysore National Highway.
Each apartment, paved with vitrified tiles, has a kitchen, a passage, one or two bedrooms, and a toilet with modern amenities.
A conference hall as well as a library with furniture has also been set up in the flat. The site had been paved with interlocking tiles and a retaining wall had been erected around the flat, he said.
“We would provide essential furniture to all the residents,” Mr. Ali said. The municipality had earmarked Rs.3 crore in its 2014-15 budget for constructing a similar flat at Munderi here to rehabilitate 75 tribal families of the Munderi tribal colony, he added.
