Steel houses to be pivot of govt’s low-cost housing scheme

To promote low-cost accommodation as part of the housing-for-all scheme, the government will push for building up of steel houses.

The project aims at providing affordable houses to urban and rural poor. This in turn will help reduce slums.

Each house will have in-built cement chambers to allow cooling and will cost about ₹2 lakh.

The steel ministry is in talks with state governments to push the project, especially in their rural areas. Model houses have been set up at Burdwan in West Bengal, Tripura and Maharashtra.

Thermocol layers would be put up in peripheral walls of these steel houses for cooling. The house, with the total area of 250 square feet, will have a living room, bedroom, kitchen, toilet and a small veranda. The houses will be more suitable for areas typically located in hills and have cool climate.

“These houses will also boost consumption of steel, as part of the national steel policy. We are looking at ways to push consumption of the metal besides providing an opportunity to people with limited budget to own a house,” steel minister Chaudhary Birender Singh told Hindustan Times.

Singh further said the ministry has written to others to consider using steel for constructing houses both in urban and rural areas.

If the experiment succeeds, the same model could be used for other purposes including building schools, panchayat buildings and bus stops in the villages.

A senior official of Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL) said the project would take a few more days.

Meanwhile, the steel ministry has drawn up an investment plan of ₹10 lakh crore from 2017 to 2030, Singh said, adding that it is looking to adopt steps that would boost its exports to 8% of the total production instead of 1.5%.