People’s aspirations on the Smart City Project are high and it is necessary that the stakeholders ensure that it moved into implementation mode quickly and the project deliverables are achieved, Union Secretary for Urban Development Rajiv Gauba said.
The stakeholders have to appreciate the fact that the concept of Smart City has caught people’s fancy, and the credibility of the Government is at stake in its implementation. The project should be implemented by 2018, he said reviewing the progress of Smart City Project for Visakhapatnam and Kakinada here on Saturday.
There is a paradigm shift in the way the government is looking at urban local bodies and projects.
The Centre does not have the resources for funding the projects. The Urban Local Bodies have to stop looking at budgetary support for their development projects and instead have to look at raising resources by leveraging their assets. They need to get funding by roping in private players, he said. The smart city programme being taken up under PPP mode should be scaled up to Pan City, the Union Urban Development Secretary said.
Visakhapatnam has divided its development plans with a pan city focus for core infrastructure such as water supply and underground drainage. The GVMC has a perspective plan with stage-wise implementation, Additional Secretary (Smart Cities) Sameer Sharma said.
There are a number of Quick Win projects in the Smart City Master Plan, and most of them would be achieved in a couple of months once the SPV is in place, Commissioner GVMC Pravin Kumar said. The aim of the Visakhapatnam Smart City project is to create ‘A resilient and healthy metropolis for the people’, he added and gave details of various projects being taken up under Area-Based Development and Pan City.
We should not impose any limitations on the planning for other cities selected under the Smart City Challenge, we should encourage them to do more. Every city should look at such pan city plans for core infrastructure and not limit itself to the area selected for retrofit, Mr Gauba said.
Principal Secretary Municipal Administration and Urban Development Karikal Valaven, Joint Secretary (Swachh Bharat Mission) in Union Urban Development Ministry Praveen Prakash, District Collector N Yuvaraj, Deputy Secretary in UD Ministry Sajeesh Kumar, VUDA Vice Chairman T Baburao Naidu, MD Swachh Andhra Corporation Limited D Muralidhar Reddy, Commissioner Kakinada Municipal Corporation Aleem Basha, other officials were present.
