The World Habitat Day for the
year 2006 will be celebrated on Monday 02nd October
2006. The first Monday of October every year has been named
as World Habitat Day by the United Nations. The theme of this
years World Habitat Day is ‘Cities – Magnate of Hopes’. The
theme chosen by the United Nations, is to remind all of us
that the world is witnessing the greatest migration in its
history of people into towns and cities. In 1950, one-third
of the world’s people lived in cities. Just 50 years later,
this rose to one-half and will continue to grow to two-thirds,
or 06 billion people, by 2050. Cities are now home to half of
humankind.
As done in the
other country in the world, in Sri Lanka too action is been
taken by the Ministry of Housing & Construction and the
National Housing Development Authority (NHDA) as the national
focal point of UN – HABITT to conduct various programmes to
mark this important event. The Ministry and the NHDA is
liaising with the other Ministries, government institutions,
local authorities, NGOO and the private sector organizations
to conduct these Habitat Day Programmes island wide.
Under
the guidance of Ministry of Housing & Construction the NHDA
has formulated a special programme to construct urban housing
schemes in the main cities of the country, to commemorate the
World Habitat Day.
This
programme will be implemented in main cities of the districts
given priority to the Colombo City and the low income
communities living in the suburbs of the cities will be
targeted under this programme.
The
common amenities of these housing projects to be provided by
the relevant urban councils or the municipal councils of these
cities. This decision has taken at the meeting held under the
patronage of Minister of Housing & Construction Mrs. Ferial
Ashraff at the auditorium of the Ministry recently.
Minister Mrs. Ferial Ashraff at this discussion pointed out
that the necessary funds for this programme and implementation
of these housing projects should be allocated by the NHDA and
construction activities of the houses could be done with the
assistance of the participation of recipients of these
houses. The lands for the construction of these projects
select with the assistance of relevant local administration
bodies of urban areas.
The NHDA expects to complete some
of the ongoing urban projects before the 2nd of
October and other projects will be inaugurated on or before
the Habitat Day.
In addition to the
city of Colombo a suitable lands for the construction of these
housing projects have already been identifies in a major
cities such as Gampaha, Matara, Puttalam, Kurunegala and
Ratnapura.
21st
July 2006
