Surat: Surat is on its way to become a slum-free city by 2022. Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC) has started building houses for nearly 80,000 slum dwellers of 354 slums pockets of the city.

SMC conducted a survey two years after central government's announcement of housing for all by 2022 and found that there were at least 354 slum pockets in the city where 74,000 units were located and 80,000 people lived. 

Two decades ago about 20 per cent of the population of the city lived in slums, but now the slums dwellers make up only 6.84 per cent of the total population. This could be mainly because SMC has been able to provide 97,000 slum dwellings families housing under different schemes. 

"We plan to provide housing to urban poor of the city under schemes for economically weaker sections (EWS), low income groups (LIG) and middle income groups (MIG)," an officer of slum redevelopment department of SMC said. 

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