Other cities yet to reach out to residents
Chennai corporation
Chennai: The Smart Cities Challenge among the ‘selected 12’ in the state is turning out to be a two-horse race with Chennai and Tiruchirapalli pulling away from the remaining contenders.
An overview of the progress made by the 12 TN cities — Chennai, Tiruchirapalli, Tirunelveli, Dindigul, Thanjavur, Tiruppur, Salem, Vellore, Coimbatore, Madurai, Erode and Thoothukudi — reveals that many of them continue to lag with respect to reaching out to residents about the smart cities programme.
On the mygov.in platform, Chennai with 1601 comments (as on October 24) and Tiruchi with 1093 comments are the runaway leaders in the bid to win the Rs 200 crore grant from the Modi government. Coimbatore with only 323 comments from the public is a distant third.
Chennai corporation officials told DC that the city concerned will be awarded more marks by the Central government based on the number of comments. The Centre is expected to release the list of first 20 cities sometime in January 2016.
Thoothukudi with a paltry four comments and Tirunelveli with just seven are the worst performers of the lot. More surprisingly, Madurai city with just 38 comments has been outdone by Dindigul corporation, the latter registering 178 suggestions from the public.
Dindigul, meanwhile, is one of the cities, alongside Thanjavur, with a poor digital interface as the local body is yet to have a functional website of its own. Without the interface, these local bodies predictably suffer in disseminating information about the smart cities programme.
A study by the Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology University (CEPT), Ahmedabad, revealed that of the total 98 cities, a large majority was ill prepared for the challenge. As many as 17 cities had no official websites while three do not have theirs in working condition. "More than half the cities have not put up any updates so far about ongoing smart-city initiatives and 64 per cent have not invited suggestions from the public," the report said.
Only Chennai, Tiruchy, Coimbatore and Erode municipal corporation websites had any sort of information related to the smart cities challenge put up on their home page.
While Chennai corporation recently announced an essay competition for the topic, My Dream about my city', under two categories - for school/college students and adults, other municipal corporations too have tried the same but received lukewarm response.
Vellore city corporation had four and two submissions under the respective categories while Tirupur had three and seven. Thoothukudi students submitted nine write-ups to their local body while the city residents came up with 28 more to supplement that contribution.
Salem, meanwhile, organised a painting or craft making competition which had a mere eight submissions. All the essays and crafts submitted by the residents to their respective cities still remain under review by the government, though the deadline for submission has elapsed.
Dindigul, Thoothukudi and Tirupur cities did what the others failed to do in conducting an online poll asking residents which sector to invest and develop in to turn the cities smart. The responses saw 21 per cent of Dindigul residents, who responded to the poll, wanting the local body to better its water and sewerage services while 16 per cent preferred investment to improve tourism.
Thoothukudi respondents were divided on what they wanted to see developed. Developments in Health and Education, Solid Waste Management and IT Connectivity were demanded by 16 per cent of respondents. However, 22 per cent of Tirupur city respondents demanded improvement in IT services while a significant 18 per cent wanted the local body to clean up the water bodies.
( Source : deccan chronicle )
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