Sarthak Kanjilal
Port Blair, June 09: The Port Blair Municipal Council has scored high in its Smart City Proposal, which is 26 percent, one of the highest among all other states.
This could be possible in consultation with various stakeholders and feedbacks from the general public to make to the final list of Smart Cities announced by the Urban Development Ministry.
It’s a matter of pride for all islanders particularly the urban population that concerted efforts by PBMC paid off as Port Blair made it to the list of fast track cities, said Mr Udit Prakash Rai, Secretary, PBMC speaking to Andaman Sheekha recently.
Explaining about the centrally sponsored scheme, Mr Rai said that procedures are underway as per the directions of the Urban Development Ministry and a company in the name of Port Blair Smart Projects Ltd will be formed which will execute all the works, projects that comes under centrally sponsored scheme of ‘Smart City’.
“It’s in the initial stages and several stages have to be completed for the company to get registered under the Companies Act.”
On the Swachh Bharat Mission, the Secretary of Municipal Council informed that the Council has already finalized its requirements and various PSUs, Banks, agencies like ANIIDCO, Indian Oil Corporation, GIC etc have been approached for construction of 384 individual toilets, 48 community toilets, 19 public toilets and 11 mobile toilets in the city.
“More than 100 tonnes of segregated garbage is collected every day as part of the ‘Waste to Energy’ initiative of the Municipal Council. Municipal Council will ink MoU with the Directorate of Agriculture soon after which the latter will collect wet waste from the PBMC Compost Yard at Brookshabad and Gandhi Park for distribution to the farmers,” he said.
Speaking about the implementation of the centrally sponsored scheme ‘National Urban Livelihood Mission’, Mr Rai said that the main focus of the scheme is to provide employment opportunities to the youth. Nearly 17000 applications have been received under the ‘Housing for All’ scheme and the Council will soon conduct a camp in the city to physically verify the eligibility of the applicants as per the criteria of the scheme.
Under the centrally sponsored scheme ‘Amrut’, the main focus will be augmentation of water, supply network, storm drain, sewerage and creating open spaces, he said.
“The proposal submitted for the year 2015-2016 under the State Level Annual Action Plan for ‘Amrut’ by the PBMC has been already approved by the ministry and an amount of Rs 3.18 crores has been sanctioned from the ministry. As soon as the grants are received, the Council will initiate steps for improvement of water distribution system,” he added.
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