Mumbai airport's modernisation plan faces a hitch

Mumbai: Vijaya Muthu's house in Gaodevi in Santa Cruz (east) overlooks the runway of the busiest airport in the country. Her one storied house with a shop is just behind the tall concrete wall topped with barbed wire, which separates the runway from the slums.
Gaodevi is one of the crowded settlements that will be moved out as part of the steps to implement the $1.5 billion Mumbai airport modernisation plan. Last week, the State Government extended the cut off date, especially for the airport slum dwellers, to January 1, 2000. But Vijaya is not ecstatic about that. "I want to know if the Government is giving us another house nearby. I refuse to be dumped into some creek or swamp. We have put a lot of money into creating a home for ourselves here and now they want to kick us out," she said.
Gaodevi is the poorest of the slums near the airport and already builders are doling out money to people, tempting them to leave. Vijaya said both her neighbours had sold their rooms to a private builder for sums ranging from Rs. 70,000 to Rs. 2 lakh. "Some private builders and their goondas are coming here and asking us to sell our houses and go. They are saying we will get nothing in the rehabilitation," she said. Many of the women who live here are domestic workers who are worried that if they are relocated, they will have no livelihood.
10/06/07 Meena Menon/The Hindu

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Categories: Airports Jun 2007