Coimbatore Corporation that has been implementing Smart Cities Mission projects has told the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Urban Development that it has taken up 23 projects and completed six of those.
According to sources in the Corporation and the Committee, which reviewed the projects in Udhagamandalam on June 7, the civic body has said that it had implemented air quality monitoring, smart city app development, flood lighting the Nehru Stadium, digitisation, bicycle sharing and eco-friendly carry bag projects.
The sources said that the Corporation had installed 30 air quality monitoring devices at 30 places for ₹11 lakh, developed the smart city mobile app for ₹10 lakh, installed flood lighting system at Nehru Stadium at ₹2.25 crore, digitised records related to buildings assessed for property tax at ₹2.60 crore, introduced bicycle sharing system at no cost and made facilities for promoting eco-friendly bags at ₹59 lakh.
Digitisation project
Though the Corporation had spent ₹2.61 crore on the digitisation project, the civic body awaited the digitised records, which it would use in building a database for the city.
Though it had not spent any money on bicycle sharing system, the company involved in the project had invested ₹38 crore.
As far as the promotion of eco-friendly bag goes, the sources said the Corporation had actually spent only around ₹3.50 crore for setting up the kiosk at its main office in Town Hall and buying the bags from manufacturers.
Regarding the ₹10.29 crore spent on solid waste management project – construction of compound wall, shed and other facilities to set up a plant to process 600 tonnes waste a day – the Corporation had reported to the Committee that it would complete the project by the end of June 2108.
Parking management project
On parking management project (on-road parking), the Corporation said it had received three bids and was evaluating those. Likewise, on the progress made in establishing an integrated command and control centre, the Corporation said it had earmarked ₹30 crore for the project, for which the Tamil Nadu Urban Finance and Infrastructure Development Corporation had called for a common tender for the State. The ₹150.73 crore 24x7 water supply staged had reached the execution stage in that the company engaged for the purpose had began the preliminary study.
The Corporation sources said that though the civic body had mentioned installation of water meters in its report to the Committee, it was having a rethink on the project, as senior State Government officials had suggested further automation. The project proposes installation of automatic water meters in 14 wards for easing the process of reading the volume of water consumed. The rethink was regarding automating the process of stopping water supply at the touch of a button.The Corporation had mentioned multi-level car parking, smart schools and sale of treated effluent projects but the on-ground situation was that it had either dropped or having a rethink on the projects.
