Stuck with the disposal of its row houses at Rushikonda for years now, VUDA has found a way out to put some of them to good use and earn revenue. A decision has been taken to rent them out to AP Human Resource Development Institute. Though outright sale or leasing out are considered priorities, since the institute itself has been relocated after bifurcation of the State, it is not in a position to take them on lease, it was learnt. For the time being the row houses will be taken on rent.
At present, the institute is functioning from Bapatla and the main centre will come up at Gannavaram.
The institute wants to have regional centres in Visakhapatnam and at Srikalahasti. According to VUDA Vice-Chairman P Basanth Kumar, 25 row houses will be rented to APHRDI at ₹12 an sft and ₹1.8 towards maintenance cost.
Recently the State government has recruited 600 irrigation engineers and the institute has to run training classes for them. The row houses at Rushikonda may come in handy to run the training for 200 of the 600 engineers. In the next three months lecture halls will also be constructed in the area meant for social infrastructure to enable the institute run the classes, Mr Basanth Kumar said.
Or some alternative arrangement can be made for organising classes at Rushikonda, he says.
Besides, a facelift will be given to the 25 duplex houses spending ₹1.5 lakh to ₹1.75 lakh on each of them.
However, repairs and construction of lecture halls will be taken up with the resources of APHRDI, Mr Basanth Kumar said.
Recently, Director General of APHRDI and retired IAS officer D Chakrapani was here for a visit to the row houses and had discussions with VUDA authorities.
The Vice-Chairman is hopeful that the remaining houses will find more marketability once the HRDI training begins.
Of the total of 88 row houses, each with more than 2000 sft area and costing more than Rs. 70 lakh, VUDA sold some of units over a number of years leaving it with 43 now.
Auction had been conducted in 2007 before construction began. Construction was completed in 2009 and they were ready in all respects by 2012, sources said.