Government announced that 3,000 houses would be allocated across State

About 50 visually challenged men and women staged a road blockade in front of Madurai Collectorate on Monday alleging inordinate delay and indifferent attitude of the officials in allocating houses to them.

Highlighting that they had been petitioning the district administration since 2015, the petitioners said their requests had been repeatedly ignored. S. Chokkaiyan, president of a music troupe run by visually challenged persons, said they started petitioning for the houses after the Tamil Nadu government in 2015 announced that 3,000 houses would be allocated to visually challenged people across the State, which worked out to roughly 100 houses in every district.

Stating that the last petition was made to Collector K. Veera Raghava Rao in October second week, L. Perumal Pandi, another visually challenged person, said Tamil Nadu Housing Board assured them to allocate houses in Athikulam area. “We visited the TNHB houses they were planning to allocate to us. They were in a dilapidated state. In the recent rains, some walls in those houses have collapsed. How can we stay there,” he asked.

As they refused to give up their protest, demanding immediate action by the Collector, traffic on Collector’s Office Road was affected for more than two hours. Attempts by the police to negotiate with the protesters failed.

Later, a group of protesters met the Collector, who assured them that houses will be allocated to them within three days, following which the visually-challenged people gave up the protest.
Source: http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Madurai/visually-challenged-people-allege-delay-in-allotting-houses/article19994886.ece