Deposit Rs 50k and get Housing Board site : U T Khader
Karnataka Housing Board relaxes norms
Bengaluru, June 12: Housing Minister UT Khader said that now, people could get the Housing Board sites immediately by depositing Rs 50,000 as the Karnataka Housing Board has changed the norms imposed earlier to get the flats.
After holding a progress review meeting of his department here on Tuesday, Khader said that there is a wrong notion that there are no buyers for the sites developed by the Karnataka Housing Board. In order to beat such wrong notion, the KHB has relaxed various norms it had imposed to get the sites. As per the earlier norms, the person who wants to purchase KHB site should have stayed in Bengaluru for five years, deposit Rs 90,000 and come under the income limit. Now all these norms were relaxed. Moreover, the KHB officials were directed to develop the layouts better than the private layouts, he said.
For the beneficiaries selected under the Rajiv Gandhi Rural Housing Scheme, the government was not giving financial assistance in the beginning to construct the houses. So, beneficiaries were finding it difficult to construct the houses. In order avoid this inconvenience, the beneficiaries were allowed to get housing loans from local cooperative banks and construct the houses. The government would repay the loan amount out of the grants being given to the beneficiaries, he said.
Till now, the KHB has been constructing G+3 apartments. But now, it was decided to construct G+14 flats and such flats would accommodate more beneficiaries. Such multi-storied buildings would be constructed in Bengaluru, Mysuru, Mangaluru and other big cities, he said.
In order to implement the central government’s Smart City Project effectively, preparations were being made. A commissioner would be appointed separately to look into the execution of the project in the state, the Minister said.
Karnataka Housing Board, Bengaluru Development Authority and private real estate companies should come under the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act- 2016 (RERA). Those companies and institutions which are out of the ambit of the Act would be blacklisted and legal action would be taken against them.
-Housing Minister UT Khader
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Jhansi fire: Nurse's heroic efforts helped save over dozen babies
Lucknow/Jhansi (UP), Nov 17: Nurse Megha James was on duty when the fire broke out at the Jhansi hospital and she threw herself headlong into the rescue efforts, playing a hero's role by saving several babies.
Even when her salwar got burned, she refused to give up and was able to evacuate 14-15 babies with others' help.
"I had gone to take a syringe to give an injection to a child. When I came back, I saw that the (oxygen) concentrator had caught fire. I called the ward boy, who came with the fire extinguisher and tried to put it out. But by then, the fire had spread," James said.
Ten babies perished in a fire that broke out at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of the Maharani Laxmi Bai Medical College in Jhansi Friday night.
Faced with an enormous blaze, James's mind worked with a frenetic speed, to the extent she cared little about burning herself.
"My chappal caught fire and I burned my foot. Then my salwar caught fire. I removed my salwar and discarded it. At that time, my mind was virtually not working," she told PTI Videos.
James just wore another salwar and went back to the rescue operation.
"There was a lot of smoke, and once the lights went out, we could not see anything. The entire staff brought out at least 14-15 children. There were 11 beds in the ward with 23-24 babies," she said.
Had the lights not gone out they could have saved more children, James said. "It all happened very suddenly. None of us had expected it."
Assistant Nursing Superintendent Nalini Sood praised James's valour and recounted bits from how the rescue operation was carried out.
"The hospital staff broke the glasses of the NICU ward to evacuate the babies. It was then Nurse Megha's salwar caught fire. Instead of caring for her safety, she stayed there to rescue the babies and handed them over to people outside," she said.
Sood said James is currently undergoing treatment at the same medical college. She said she did not know the extent of her burns.
"The rescued babies were shifted to a ward very close to the NICU ward… When I recall the scene, I feel like crying," she said.
Dr Anshul Jain, the head of the anaesthesiology department at the medical college, explained the standard rescue operation and claimed the hospital followed the protocol to the T.
"In the triage process during an ICU evacuation, the policy is to evacuate less-affected patients first. The rationale behind this approach is that patients requiring minimal support can be relocated quickly, enabling a larger number of evacuations to be completed in a shorter time.
"In contrast, patients on ventilators or requiring high oxygen support demand more time and resources for evacuation," he said.
"This principle was successfully implemented in Jhansi, playing a significant role in saving many lives," Jain said.
A newborn rescued from the fire died due to illness on Sunday, Jhansi District Magistrate Avinash Kumar said.
