Residents express grievances at Smart City consultation meeting

‘Take steps to provide more link roads between Avanashi Road and Trichy Road.’

The Coimbatore City Traffic Police should ensure that road users do not obstruct ‘free left’; the government agencies concerned should install closed-circuit television cameras throughout the city; the Coimbatore Corporation should construct subways for pedestrians, the State Government should investigate the shoddy detailed project reports prepared for execution of works under the JNNURM scheme – these were some of the grievances expressed by the participants at a meeting at the Collectorate here on Wednesday morning to invite suggestions for preparing the Smart City vision document.

Collector Archana Patnaik, Corporation Commissioner K. Vijayakarthikeyan and other senior officials were present at the meeting.

Ms. Patnaik said the district administration and corporation had organised the meeting for the purpose of preparing the Smart City plan with people’s participation and that the consultant, ICRA Management Consulting Services, did not have much time on hand as it had to submit the plan by November.

A participant said that the corporation along with the State department concerned should take steps to provide more link roads between Avinashi Road and Trichy Road as the Kamarajar Road was often congested.

Another participant said the corporation should not engage consultant for preparing the Smart City plan but should prepare the plan by consulting the experts among the public and trade and industry bodies.

The government department heads and representatives of public sector enterprises made suggestions related to providing utility ducts on all roads so as to take telecom and power cables underground and cover the ducts with slabs to prevent repeated digging and damage to roads.

V. Eswaran, of the Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, suggested taking an aspect and working on it rather than distributing the funds the corporation got to various projects.

Aam Aadmi Party representatives called for measures for conservation of tanks and revival of River Noyyal.

Anand Madhavan, of ICRA Management Consulting Services, said the organisation would conduct a one-on-one meeting with all the departments to elicit their suggestions in preparing the plan.

Under the Smart City project, the Central Government had provided scope for dovetailing funds from other schemes and integrating projects from other departments as well.