Parliamentary Secretary to Chief Minister K. Lakshminarayanan has expressed his unhappiness over the prioritisation of projects planned under the smart city programme.
In a letter to the Lieutenant Governor, the Chief Minister, the Minister for Local Administration, the Chief Secretary and the Secretary in-charge of smart city, Mr. Lakshminarayanan said not much consultation had been done in finalising schemes.
None of the six MLAs representing the urban constituencies were consulted in the selection of schemes under the programme.
It had remained a bureaucratic exercise, he said. Key initiatives that could have made a big difference in upgrading town's infrastructure such as construction of tenements, provision for 24x7 power and water supply, garbage management, eco-friendly mass rapid transport system and installation of CCTV cameras were ignored. The space available in the AFT, Swadeshi Mill Complex and the port should be utilised for projects that could generate jobs and spur economic growth, he said.
Several projects planned through a mere bureaucratic exercise had not achieved their intended purpose.
The construction of a modern fish market on the East Coast Road under the tsunami rehabilitation programme were examples of this. The market though officially opened was yet to be fully utilised, Mr. Lakshminarayanan added.
