E-Paper
NDMC presents its budget for 2020-21
New Delhi: The New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) will set up 100 “fast public e-charging stations with capacities of 150 kilowatt”, in a bid to push energy efficient
New Delhi: The New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) will set up 100 “fast public e-charging stations with capacities of 150 kilowatt”, in a bid to push energy efficient vehicles, its chairman, Dharmendra said on Friday, while presenting the council’s budget for the 2020-21 financial year.
“The world is moving towards the trend of electric-operated vehicles. NDMC itself has procured e-vehicles for its use. However, the non-availability of appropriate charging stations in the city is a major deterrent, limiting its wider use,” he said.
“NDMC has already established 55 charging stations of 15kw capacity. I propose setting up of 100 more fast public e-charging stations, which will be of a much higher capacity (150kw) and can charge three vehicles at the same time, at three times faster speed,” he added.
Presenting his maiden budget for the council after he was appointed NDMC chairman in November 2019, he pegged the municipality’s total revenue earnings for the coming year at ₹4,372.40 crore and estimated the expenditure to be around ₹4017.24 crore, leaving the council with a surplus of ₹355 crore.
He made at least two other transport-related proposals. “We will implement our long due ‘e-scooter system,’ a non-polluting mode of transport for short distances, on the lines of our very popular Public Bike Sharing System (PBS). We will also set up ‘Smart Bus-Q-Shelters’ at 20 locations, which will have water ATMs, digital interactive panels and panic buttons. It will be executed under a public-private partnership (PPP) model by 2020-21 we hope,” he said.
He announced several IT-based schemes such as the ‘Single Sign-On (SSO)’ system, where residents can log in with a user ID and password to pay various utility bills from anywhere in the world. They can also submit property tax and obtain birth and death certificates online.
“SSO will help everyone access information in a secure manner and will add to the efficiency of work for us. It will be done with geo-fencing and we hope to launch it by January, 2020,” said Dharmendra.
‘Chat-Bot,’ an artificial intelligence-based facility will be made available on the NDMC website for citizens with queries to get immediate and personalised response 24x7, he said.
“The ‘digital door numbers’ scheme, whereby an alpha-numeric code is assigned to each property to track information regarding it, is also moving swiftly,” a senior NDMC officer said. So far, 52,822 such numbers have been created and the project will be completed by March 2020.
In terms of solid waste management, officers said the iron trolleys, used to collect trash, in the NDMC area will be done away with. “Instead, we will have underground ‘smart bins,’ that will send alerts to our command centre to clean when full. Sites for at least 10 ‘pink toilets’ have been earmarked and will be ready in 2021. Besides, four sewage treatment plants (STPs) based on phytorid technology (natural systems) will be set up in NDMC schools,” the officer quoted above said.
