Odisha’s Cuttack Municipal Corporation with the objective of inculcating reading among people of slum clusters, especially youngsters and children, will put up prefab smart libraries in such areas.

The 1,000 sq feet container libraries will be made with wood, plastic, fibreglass, pre-engineering structure steel and aluminium. The structure will have all windows, doors, wall paintings, chairs, bookshelves, tables, electrical fittings and solar panels. To make the place eco-friendly, its entire electricity needs will be taken care of by the solar panel fittings. It will have the capacity of seating 25 people at one time.

Each of these libraries will be stocked with a large number of books on different subjects. The collection will include fiction, non-fiction, story books, academic books, magazines on general knowledge and others.

The cost of each of these prefab libraries will be Rs.74,000 and the civic body has decided to make 10 such facilities at a cost of Rs.7.4 crores.

Elaborating on this, a senior official of the CMC said that they have already decided on 10 different slums to set up these prefab smart libraries. The task of making them has been given to the Government owned Engineering Projects (I) Ltd.