With construction in these four places expected to begin by January 1999, the housing agency has set a 15-month deadline for the tenements to be ready. ``If everything goes well, we should have the houses ready by mid-2000,'' says managing director of SSPP, S S Gill. SSPP, a housing corporate formed by the state government for implementation of its scheme to give free houses to slumdwellers, is to have an equity capital of Rs 600 crore. While that money is still awaited from the state government, it's flaggingoff its ventures with the Rs 30 crore loaned by MHADA.

``It's a viable proposal for railways,'' explained Gill, ``to shift its slumdwellers to Turbhe-Mandale, since the people themselves are willing to move out.'' Around 7,831 slums line the harbour track between Wadala and Mankhurd. The slums which almost brush against the trains have reduced their speed to a crawl. Optimisation of harbour lines, which was to have been part of the World Bank-sponsored Mumbai Urban Transport Project II, has been dropped in the first phase because of the problem of slum rehabilitation. SSPP is proposing to house around 3,000 families of slumdwellers between Kurla and Mankhurd in the 3,750 tenements it's constructing on MHADA land in Turbhe-Mandale. Similarly, it is building around 4,500 tenements at Dindoshi, expecting the civil aviation department to pick them up for relocating encroachers on its land in the area. ``We're also planning to talk to BMC, who will surely want to clear its footpaths and widen roads,'' he added.