THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The city corporation's decision to switch over to Sanketham, the building permit software developed by Information Kerala Mission (IKM), has landed hundreds of citizens in trouble in the absence of trained hands to run the programme.
The switchover came into effect on August 1 and the town planning wing stopped receiving building permit applications from July 31.
The IKM is yet to give proper training to people handling it. A senior official said Sanketham was up and running and there was no issue in processing applications.
“We have written to the IKM to immediately hold training classes for the staff. The new software is a bit complicated compared to the previous one. So there would be some initial glitches till everyone gets used to it,” said the official.
The Kerala Building Designers Organisation has given a written complaint to the mayor and corporation secretary to fix the issue at the earliest.
“The government issued the order directing all corporations to adopt the new software in 2013. All of a sudden, without any warning, the civic body switched over to the new software landing us in trouble,” said its president Kowdiar Harikumar.
The Confederation of Real Estate Developers Association of India (CREDAI) criticised the software introduced by the Urban Affairs Department to end corruption in the local bodies saying it did not serve the purpose.
“We have no issue if the software is fully online. Now we have to produce the soft copy and hard copy of the application and the software is not serving the purpose. To end corruption, the government should restrict human interventions. Currently, we have to give the blueprint of the application so technically nothing has changed,” said CREDAI secretary-general S. N. Raghuchandran Nair.
