Nirman Shramik Pucca Ghar Yojana (NSPGY)

What is Nirman Shramik Pucca Ghar Yojana?

Nirman Shramik Pucca Ghar Yojana, abbreviated NSPGY, is a housing scheme of the Government of Odisha for building and other construction workers in rural areas who are registered with the Odisha Building & Other Construction Workers' Welfare Board (OB&OCWWB) and do not own a pucca house. Its name means "construction worker's pucca house scheme".

Three different arms of government are involved, and knowing which does what saves a lot of wasted trips:

• The Labour & ESI Department is the administrative department for the scheme, and issued the modified guidelines dated 11 January 2018 that govern it today, superseding the earlier guidelines of 10 June 2016.
• The Odisha Building & Other Construction Workers' Welfare Board funds the scheme entirely from the cess it collects, with an annual budget outlay decided by the Board for each financial year.
• The Panchayati Raj & Drinking Water Department executes it, with the Block as the implementing agency and overall supervision by the District Collector and the Project Director, DRDA.

What NSPGY pays. The unit cost for new construction is Rs 1,20,000 in non-IAP districts and Rs 1,30,000 in IAP districts, expressly kept at par with Biju Pucca Ghar Yojana and revisable by the State Government. On top of it:

• Rs 12,000 for an individual household latrine under MGNREGS or SBM(G).
• 90 person-days of MGNREGS wages in non-IAP districts and 95 person-days in IAP districts.
• Convergence for a potable drinking water supply, electrification under DDU-GJY or BGJY, MGNREGS wages for land development, and social security cover.
• An early-completion incentive of Rs 20,000 if the house and latrine are finished within 4 months of the first instalment, or Rs 10,000 within 6 months.

What the house must be. Minimum carpet area 25 square metres including a hygienic cooking space and excluding the toilet, with the roof mandatorily of RCC or another material of equivalent strength approved by the PR&DW Department, and an expected structural life of at least 30 years. No contractor may be involved. The worker builds the house.

Whose name the house is in. The dwelling unit is sanctioned preferably in the name of the woman head of the household; jointly in the names of husband and wife where the household is not headed by a woman; in the male head's name where there is no female spouse; and only in the name of the person with disability where the beneficiary is selected under the disability quota.

Who is eligible for Nirman Shramik Pucca Ghar Yojana?

You can be selected if:

• You are a building or other construction worker in a rural area of Odisha.
• You hold a valid registration with the Odisha Building & Other Construction Workers' Welfare Board under the Building and Other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, and that registration has been valid for at least one continuous period of 1 year. This is the defining condition of the scheme.
• Your household appears in the kutcha household category of the SECC 2011 list, which the BDO checks at scrutiny.
• You have not availed housing assistance under any government scheme before.
• Field verification confirms you have not already constructed a pucca house as defined in the guidelines.
• You have land, your own plot, or a family member's plot with a no-objection certificate from the land owner.

You cannot apply, and are not eligible for a house under NSPGY, if:

• Your Board registration has lapsed, or has not run for a full continuous year. Renewing a lapsed registration restores your claim only from the point the one-year condition is again satisfied.
• You have already been sanctioned housing assistance under any government scheme. Such names are deleted from the list at BDO scrutiny.
• Your household is not enlisted in the kutcha household category of SECC 2011.
• Field verification finds you already have a pucca house; foundation, wall and roof of permanent material with an expected life of 30 years.
• You are an urban construction worker. NSPGY is expressly a rural scheme.

There is one important re-entitlement. Under clause 12.2 of the guidelines, a worker who was already allotted an NSPGY house and whose house has fully collapsed, been washed away or been fully damaged due to landslide, elephant menace, earthquake, flood, fire accident or cyclone is eligible for another NSPGY house.

How to apply for Nirman Shramik Pucca Ghar Yojana

NSPGY has no separate application form for a house. The scheme works off the Welfare Board's own registration records, so the practical steps are about keeping your registration alive and your papers ready.

1. Register with the Odisha Building & Other Construction Workers' Welfare Board, or renew your existing registration, at the District Labour Office or through the Labour Directorate's worker registration channel. Then keep it continuously valid for at least one year. The one-year continuity is what the District Labour Officer checks.
2. Get your land papers and bank account in order. Obtain a current Record of Rights for the plot, or a written no-objection certificate from the family member who owns it, and make sure you have an active bank account in your own name, because every rupee comes through PFMS.
3. The District Labour Officer submits the list. The DLO draws up the list of construction workers with valid Board registration of at least one continuous year and submits it to the Block Development Officer, with all details needed for field enquiry.
4. The BDO scrutinises and verifies. The Block Development Officer checks whether you were earlier sanctioned housing assistance under any government scheme and whether your household is in the SECC 2011 kutcha category — deleting names that fail either test, and causes field verification through Block functionaries to confirm you have not built a pucca house.
5. The Block Level Selection Committee approves eligibility. The Committee is chaired by the BDO, with an Assistant Executive Engineer, Assistant BDO or Assistant Engineer as member and the Assistant Labour Officer or Rural Labour Inspector as member convener.
6. The Collector approves and the list is published. The BDO recommends the list to the District Collector, who approves it and forwards it to the OB&OCW Welfare Board and the PR&DW Department. The Department then communicates district and block-wise targets and publishes the entire list of eligible beneficiaries on its portal, and the list is also made available on the Board's portal. Check your name there.
7. Sanction follows the AwaasSoft priority list. The BDO sanctions houses against the allotted target strictly in the order of the auto-generated priority list in AwaasSoft. Before the work order, geo-tagged photographs of you with your kutcha house and at the proposed site are captured.
8. Build the house yourself within the 12-month timeline, with a Block staff member tagged to you for facilitation.

Where a beneficiary is infirm, destitute or a person with disability who cannot bear the strain of supervising construction, and asks for help in writing, the house can be taken up as part of the mason training programme or entrusted to a reputed agency with the Collector's approval.

How is the NSPGY money released and tracked?

Release is tied to the stage of construction, and funds are credited by direct account transfer through PFMS from a state-level account named "Nirman Shramik Pucca Ghar Yojana" maintained by the PR&DW Department, into which the Welfare Board credits the required amount.

The 2nd, 3rd and 4th instalments must reach your account within a week of the BDO receiving the eye-estimation report, spot verification and geo-tagged photographic evidence for that stage. All inspection photographs are taken and uploaded through the AwaasApp or the state's own app, and the record lives in AwaasSoft, the State Rural Housing Portal and the OB&OCW Board's portal, the three places to check progress.

One condition holds up the last instalment more often than any other: the beneficiary must fix the engraved NSPGY logo on the front wall of the house, showing name, year of sanction and unit cost, after which the fourth instalment of Rs 30,000 is released.

Why do NSPGY cases fail or stall?

• Registration short of one continuous year. The commonest reason. A worker registered eight months ago, or whose registration lapsed and was renewed, does not meet the test until a full continuous year has run.
• Name deleted for prior housing assistance. The BDO's scrutiny against earlier government housing sanctions is mechanical and removes the name.
• Household not in the SECC 2011 kutcha category. This is a hard filter in the NSPGY guidelines, unlike BPGY where left-out households can be brought in by the District Level Committee.
• Pucca house found at field verification, even where the SECC record still shows kutcha.
• Stage photographs not uploaded to AwaasSoft, which freezes the next instalment however far the building has actually progressed.
• Logo not fixed, holding up the final Rs 30,000.
• Land dispute or missing NOC from the family member whose plot is being used.

Where do I complain about an NSPGY problem?

For anything about registration and the eligibility list, a lapsed registration, a name missing from the list the DLO sent; go to the District Labour Officer, and to the Assistant Labour Officer or Rural Labour Inspector, who sits on the Block Level Selection Committee as member convener.

For anything about sanction, work order or instalments, go to the Block Development Officer, then to the Project Director, DRDA, who is personally responsible at district level, and then to the District Collector, who is responsible for proper implementation. BDOs inspect at least 10 per cent of houses under construction, district officers 1 per cent and the APD (Rural Housing) 10 per cent of the district's houses, so there is an inspection record to invoke.

The state rural housing portal rh.odisha.gov.in publishes a toll-free helpline, 1800-121-9421. The guidelines make both the Labour & ESI Department and the Panchayati Raj & Drinking Water Department responsible for clarifying doubts and removing bottlenecks, so an unresolved case can be escalated to either.

No fee is payable for NSPGY at any stage, and no contractor or agent has any role in a scheme where the guidelines forbid contractors outright.