The Federal Government, through the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, will be spending N4.1bn in the 2024 budget to upgrade slums in 24 locations across 18 states.
The project will the government provide the selected slums water supply, solar street lights, rehabilitation of access roads, construction of drainages, and waste management and sanitation services.
Recall that the Minister of Housing and Rural Development, Ahmed Dangiwa, last month at the 12th meeting of the National Council on Lands, Housing and Urban Development, promised to rewrite the story of housing and urban development in the country by preventing the proliferation of slums.
“For the Slum Upgrading Programme, the ministry’s plans to upgrade 26 slums in the six regions of the country, and the Federal Capital Territory, to improve the living standards of the slum residents and urban poor by providing key infrastructure and ancillary services,” Dangiwa said.
An analysis of the document showed that the ministry would embark on urban renewal and slum upgrading involving the completion of construction/rehabilitation of roads, culverts, and drains in Ondo, Sokoto, Katsina, Kano, Yobe, Kwara, Lagos, Bauchi, Enugu, Uyo, Akwa-Ibom, Adamawa, Osun states and the Federal Capital Territory.
Urban renewal and slum upgrading involving the provision of solar street lights would be implemented in Imo, Edo, Ogun, Ekiti, Yobe, Katsina, Ondo, and the FCT.
Meanwhile, the ministry has provisioned the sum of N18.19bn for the construction of 20,000 units under the renewed Hope Agenda housing scheme and 200 million for the national social housing fund to implement various housing initiatives aimed at reducing the number of homeless persons.
Also, N1.8bn has been set aside for the establishment of local building material manufacturing clusters in the six geopolitical zones in the country.
SOURCE: PUNCHNG
