Affordable housing for all…
Tamil Nadu’s urban population of 3.5 crore, accounts for 48.44 per cent of the total population. With rapid pace of urbanisation, one of the biggest challenges is provision of affordable housing in urban areas.
Priority is given to identification of lands in the urban local bodies for implementing the affordable housing project under Housing for All.
Since 1988, Government of Tamil Nadu has been implementing the Tamil Nadu Urban Development Project (TNUDP) financed by International Development Agency (IDA) of the World Bank. The Tamil Nadu Urban Development Fund (TNUDF) is the first investment of German KfW in the field of environmental-related urban development. The fund was originally launched by the state in 1996 aided by the World Bank. The project aims to develop urban regions of the state.
Best health-insured state…
Chennai ACCOUNTS for 45 per cent of the medical tourists arriving in the country. With a strong medical infrastructure, Chennai has grown as the medical tourism hub along with the emergence of government hospitals offering quality intensive care, neonatal care, rare surgeries, pre- and post-operative care facilities at affordable cost. The state has a vast spread of primary health centres (PHCs).
“Tamil Nadu is among the best health-insured states in India. The public sector hospitals in the state treat six lakh outpatients and 65,000 inpatients a day. We cover 1.5 crore population with an insurance cover of up to Rs 2 lakh a year for 1027 procedures. We are among the top three states in providing affordable healthcare,” said Dr J Radhakrishan, Principal Secretary, Health and Family Welfare Department.
The Chief Minister’s Comprehensive Health Insurance Scheme covers close to 60 per cent of population. This brilliant concept could be traced as the inspiration for the Ayushman Bharat National Health Protection Mission launched by the Centre last year to provide health cover of Rs 5 lakh each to 10 crore families, that will benefit 50 crore population. A news for gratification is the recent announcement on setting up an All India Institute of Medical Sciences unit at Madurai.
TN ensures food for all
Tamil Nadu has been implementing a universal public distribution system reaching out to its entire population. This has made a beneficial impact ensuring food security for the 7.5 crore population. The state has completed end-to-end computerisation of the large PDS system through a system integrator. Smart family cards have been distributed to over 2 crore families.
The structure of PDS in the state follows a functional pattern involving procurement, storage, distribution of foodgrains on the one hand and distributing the food items to people through an extensive network of Fair Price Shops (FPSs), monitoring the movement of essential commodities and enforcement actions against infraction of guidelines, procedure and malpractices, said Dayanand Kataria, Principal Secretary, Co-operation, Food and Consumer Protection Department.
Kataria said that all the 34,773 fair price shops in the state have been provided with point of sale devices to distribute essential commodities. These have helped in online allocation of commodities for the PDS shops, real time monitoring of the movement of commodities, availability at godowns and fair price shops and distribution of commodities to cardholders as per entitlement.
The new web-based monitoring system has been a great help in eliminating corruption and preventing bogus billing as transaction details are communicated through SMS to registered mobile numbers of cardholders. The portal www.tnpds.gov.in helps family cardholders to do changes online.
On 28 February 2018, the Tamil Nadu State Food Commission was constituted to monitor and evaluate the implementation of National Food Security Act and to deal with appeals relating to non-redressal of complaints at the district level.
