DP push: BMC to team up with NGOs, citizen groups

MUMBAI: The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is looking at partnering with various citizen groups to run various facilities proposed in the city’s development

MUMBAI: The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is looking at partnering with various citizen groups to run various facilities proposed in the city’s development plan.

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The Development Plan (DP) 2034 has earmarked homeless shelters, women’s hostels, old-age homes, aadhar kendras, care centres and student hostels in the city. The civic body is working on a policy in which it will set up these centres and NGOs will run them.

The civic body has been putting forth various ideas before NGOs such as Right to Pee, which works on women’s sanitation, Hamara Shehar Mumbai Abhiyaan (HSMA), Akshara, Pratham and the Stree Mukti Sanagathana.

Ramanath Jha, officer on special duty who has been looking at the DP revision, said that they are holding several meetings with the NGOs to explore options. The corporation is also considering if the NGOs can build a pilot of these centres with BMC’s funding, based on their experience and ideas in the coming months.

Jha also had a meeting with HSMA on Thursday. “We want to partner with the NGOs to maintain the centres as the BMC does not have expertise in these areas. It will also mean additional recruitment for the corporation. There are experts who are already involved in the work and can do a better job,” Jha said.

DP 2034 was released in May, 2016 for public scrutiny. BMC has accepted several long-pending demands from these NGOs in the blueprint. N

Now, BMC is looking at various ways to implement the 2034 blueprint because of its failure with the two DPs earlier.

Sabah Khan from HSMA said, “We are willing to engage with the civic body, provided it is a two-way process of sharing information. We will be working on the conditions and will submit it to BMC in the forthcoming week.” HSMA is a broader campaign that includes most of the NGOs that BMC could partner with.