Secretary of State for Housing Mrs. Chahida Ben Fraj Bouraoui said the budget allocated to the program designed to replace substandard dwellings is estimated at 40 million dinars (first part), as part of the 2012 supplementary budget. Speaking at a news conference held Tuesday in Tunis, she said this program will touch on “emergency cases” in different regions of the country.
Given the lack of statistics on substandard dwellings, she announced the creation of regional committees chaired by governors and bringing together representatives of regional and local authorities and the ministries of social affairs and equipment as well as the civil society.
“These committees will be tasked with conducting field surveys to set a final list of substandard dwellings and recipients by late March 2012.”
A national committee will then be created within the equipment ministry and proceed with the construction of a central dwelling on the same places of the substandard dwellings, along with building new social projects under the form of residential units or allotments on public lands.
The ministry will also proceed with the realization of the second part of the “Omar El Mokhtar” city project in the region of Sijoumi (west of the capital), with the construction of nearly 700 social housing units and community facilities.
The City of Omar El Mokhtar stretches over 20 hectares, nearly 12 hectares of which were used for the construction of an integrated area housing 55 building (nearly 600 social housing units), a primary school, a high school, a police station, a post office, a mosque, a kindergarten, municipality…
Regarding development of popular districts, Mrs. Bouraoui said 31 districts will be concerned by these works in 2012. They include 23,850 residential units housing nearly 123 thousand persons.
The secretary of state also announced the launch of studies on the new integrated development program (2012-2015) which will involve 73 districts nationwide, housing nearly 430 thousand persons.
This program will touch on 39 districts in inland regions in 2012.
