NMCC budget addresses AQI, health, education

Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation's ₹4,950-crore surplus budget for 2024-25 includes air quality improvements, health sector expansions, and a parking mobile app.

The ₹4,950-crore surplus budget of the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC) for 2024-25, presented by municipal commissioner Rajesh Narvekar on Tuesday, has some interesting projects and services for residents and even officers to look out for.

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To address the city’s poor air quality index (AQI), the municipal body will strengthen its air-quality monitoring system with more advanced machinery. Accordingly, in addition to daily manual sweeping by 2,646 sanitation workers, NMMC will procure seven sweeping machines for its city roads of 1,02,000 km.

“Since vehicular traffic is going to increase further, NMMC has decided to upgrade its mechanisms used in the road-sweeping process,” said city engineer Sanjay Desai. “The work order to purchase the sweeping machines, comprising two diesel, four CNG and one electrical vehicle, is already underway. In places where sweeping machines cannot be used, NMMC will purchase battery-operated sweeper machines with a 100-litre hopper capacity.”

Desai added that three fog cannon mist machines were also on the anvil to mitigate the poor AQI. At eight city chowks, where there is considerable traffic, the civic body has decided to have a static fogging dust suppression system as well as air-purifying units.

The budget has some major proposals in the health sector. These include expansion of the existing mother-child hospital at Kopar Khairane, 12 modular OTs for the general hospitals at Nerul, Airoli and Belapur, MRI centres, a microbiology laboratory, a mammography centre in Vashi General Hospital and a cath lab. “The modular OTs will ensure protection from bacterial and viral infections and enable the medical team to conduct error-free operations,” said Nerul medical officer Dr Uddhav Khilare. “The problem of expensive culture tests from private laboratories will be addressed by setting up microbiology labs in Nerul General Hospital.”

Anticipating the problems that the ever-increasing number of vehicles will pose for drivers looking for vacant parking spots, the budget has provisions to develop a parking mobile application. “The idea is to enable residents to locate the areas available for parking,” said an official. With regard to sports and education, NMMC is laying emphasis on familiarising students with different forms of sports as well as artificial intelligence. “Infrastructure for promoting sports like wrestling, boxing and swimming is being built in different parts of the city,” said an official from the education department. “Since this is the age of artificial intelligence, NMMC-run schools will have solar-operated robotics coding and artificial intelligence laboratories. For this, a budgetary allocation of ₹5 crore has been made.”