For millions of slum dweller in Delhi, there is finally some reassuring news in the form of amendments brought in by the Delhi Government in its slum policy.

As per a notification issued on February 25, this year, lakhs of slum dwellers would be benefited by the liberalised norms on their identification and entitlement for rehabilitation. Stating that it was the pressure mounted by the slum dwellers themselves which made the Delhi Government change several conditions for eligibility for rehabilitation, Ramendra Kumar, secretary general of Delhi Shramik Sangathan, said the major amendments include the change in the eligibility condition.

Social activist Medha Patkar and 20 persons were arrested on Thursday for protesting against the demolition of slums at Golibar in Khar, in suburban Mumbai.

Singanallur MLA allocates the total amount

Without much of a fanfare, the Coimbatore Corporation with the support of Singanallur MLA R. Chinnasamy, has gone about installing solar street lights. According to Deputy Commissioner, Coimbatore Corporation, S. Sivarasu, the civic body has thus far installed 220 solar street lights and is in the process of installing 50 more. Each of the lights is powered by 27 watt bulbs.

The 1.5 lakh inhabitants of Dhaka's biggest slum Korail Bosti are dependent on illegal and often dirty water that comes through a small, aboveground rubber tube.

Gujarat government has spent about Rs 796 crores for constructing 17,148 houses in Ahmedabad city for the rehabilitation of slum dwellers.

The Cabinet will take up the proposal for a National Urban Health Mission (NUHM) on Thursday. It will cater to the 37.7 crore urban population and will be a sub-mission of an overarching National Health Mission (NHM) for urban and rural areas.

In a potentially contentious proposal and a shift from NRHM, where public health facilities are the sole service providers, NUHM is proposed to have provisions for public-private partnerships to fill infrastructure gaps.

More than 12 years after it undertook a survey of the city's toilets, the civic administration will once again map all toilets across the city. The BMC will conduct an extensive survey and map all public toilets for both male and female people across locations including all slums in the city.

"There is no comprehensive data of public toilets in the city. There is an urgent need for more toilets but one needs to undertake a gap analysis to plan further," said Rajiv Jalota, BMC additional municipal commissioner.

Survey has identified 282 malnourished childrenin 26 slums of the district

World Vision, a development and advocacy organisation, has implemented a project to tackle child malnutrition in Coimbatore since January. It has been taken up in collaboration with Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), a Central Government-sponsored social welfare scheme. The organisation, which has consultative status with UNESCO and partnerships with UN agencies such as United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and World Health Organisation (WHO), undertook a survey in 26 urban slums in the district, which revealed a child malnutrition rate of 45 per cent, according to K. Vetriselvan John, Programme Manager (Coimbatore), World Vision.

Mumbai: Mangroves in the city are in peril. Green cover in Mahul, Chembur has come under threat after toxins were dumped there last week.

The incident was reported behind a Slum Rehabilitation Authority building (SRA) in Mahul where trucks have reportedly been discarding oil residue on the mangroves. Locals said that the activity has been going on since the last one week. The matter was reported to the forest department and the mangrove cell has already inspected the area and taken samples. However, those dumping the deposits remain unidentified.

CUTTACK: Lack of toilet facilities could soon be a thing of the past for Cuttack slum -dwellers. To improve the sanitation condition in the slums, Cuttack Municipal Corporation (CMC) has decided to construct 32 community toilets.

The Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation will provide assistance to the civic body for the project. The project will cost Rs 4.21 crore, of which the CMC will spend Rs 1.98 crore while the foundation will spend the remaining amount.