Panel for pvt sector in urban services

In a bid to upgrade urban civic amenities, a Planning Commission committee has recommended the entry of private sector in the delivery of public services, including water and sewage management. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Jul 8, 2012, 23:59:12 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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In a bid to upgrade urban civic amenities, a Planning Commission committee has recommended the entry of private sector in the delivery of public services, including water and sewage management.

Owing to leakages and poor distribution system, a majority of cities have poor water supply system. Only half of the garbage gets disposed of and 30-40 % of the sewage gets treated. Statistics also indicate that only 20% roads have storm water drains, the absence of which leads to water logging.

To address these issues, the panel has suggested People Public Private Partnership (PPPP) mode, where people would have a crucial role in design and implementation of projects.

"The role of people in such projects is crucial," said Planning Commission's steering committee on urban management. The panel wants everyone who gets municipal water in cities should pay for it. It also said every household should be promised proper sanitation facilities and government should treat all sewage generated in cities.

For this, Rs 1,62,000 crore will be required in the next five years. The panel has asked the local bodies to seek the help of private sector in raising funds. "This can be achieved through a National Mission on Sustainable Habitat," the panel's report said.

The panel has also suggested setting up of an independent ombudsman in each municipal corporation and exclusive lokayuktas to address complaints of corruption.

The committee wants municipal bodies to reform property tax regime. The government should also levy tax on vacant plots to prevent land hoarding.

The recommendations are expected to be part of 12th five-year-plan to be considered by chief ministers at a meeting in Delhi in September.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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