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Ready to travel to Kerala for study, Chandigarh councillors have no time for key meet in city
Councillors will cover 7,000 km to tour Kerala for five days from December 21, but skipped conference on urban transformation in their own city.
The city’s municipal corporation (MC) councillors have no problems covering distances of 7,000 km while touring Kerala for five days from December 21 to study smart city management, but they are too busy to attend a conference on urban transformation in their own city.
The conference, on Thursday, had experts, policy makers and government officials from Chandigarh, Punjab, and other parts of north India brainstorming on challenges of growing urbanisation and use of technology for better public delivery system.
It was organised by Chandigarh Smart City Limited (CSCL) in collaboration with MC and a private agency.
But 25 out of 35 elected and nominated councillors, including mayor Rajesh Kalia, gave the event a miss.
While Kalia said he was out of station, many other absentees whom HT talked to came up with vague responses. Some said they received the invitations late.
Two months ago, hardly any councillors were present when MC held a national conference on dog menace.
“The residents are not against exposure and capacity building of our elected representatives but what annoys us is their unwillingness to learn new ideas,” said Vinod Vashisht, convener, City Forum of Residents Welfare Organisations (CFORWO).
“What’s the guarantee that they will learn something new thousands of miles away in study tours when they don’t take interest in an event on city development at their doorstep,” he said.
PUBLIC INVOLVEMENT KEY TO MAKING CITIES SMART
While speaking at the opening ceremony of the conference on urban transformation, MC commissioner-cum-CEO, Chandigarh Smart City Limited, KK Yadav, said public involvement was key to making a city smart. He said that it is the people and their involvement with their city which makes it smarter. “Here in Chandigarh, the CSCL and MC take feedback from people about our projects, putting their grievance redressal on topmost priority, giving them timely services with transparency so that there is no allegation of corruption.”
Chandigarh, an epitome of urban transformation model, was a crucial case study for urban planners and architects across the world. The city founded at the foothills of Shivalik range right after India gained Independence was the first and still one of the best planned cities in the country, he said.
CSCL is currently working on four major projects, ie water management, waste management, development technology-enabled surveillance system and energy conservation to make city life better, Yadav added.
Other speakers on the occasion shone the spotlight on the emerging ideas in urban transformation and the use of information and communication technologies for the city’s development in the city. While Shin Bongkil, ambassador, South Korea, made presentations on challenges and leveraging technology for urban development, Sanjay Baniwal, Chandigarh DGP, talked about the e-beat system and e-sathi app to bridge the gap between the police and public. Himachal Pradesh special secretary Lalit Jain said that the major concern for the hill state is to strike a balance between development and ecological imbalance, for which advanced technology is of paramount importance.
