Central command to keep hawk eye on civic services
HELP AT HAND By March 19, the ‘command and control centre’ at NDMC’S HQ at Palika Kendra will help in better coordination, realtime monitoring and fixing of public grievances
NEW DELHI: A resident of Golf Links had lodged a complaint with the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) about damaged roads in his neighbourhood. The next day, he came to know that the civic agency has ‘resolved’ the problem on paper but nothing had actually improved on ground. The next day, he had to file a fresh complaint and start from the scratch, which was a time-consuming process.
But change is at hand and no complainant may have to go through this experience by March next year as the civic agency is in the process of setting a ‘command and control centre’ at its headquarters in Palika Kendra for better coordination, real-time monitoring and fixing of public grievances.
The initiative, first by any municipal agency in Delhi, is under the smart city project.
Council chairman Naresh Kumar said the system would provide live updates of all 35 utility and civic services by various departments and help keep a vigil on the movement of all its service vehicles such as garbagelifting trucks and suction machines, mechanical sweepers, and complaints and requests received for specific utility services. The centre is likely to be operational by March 2019 .
Explaining how the system will work, a senior official of NDMC’S information technology (IT) department said, “We have already installed global positioning systems (GPS) on vehicles that pick garbage or used for electricity, sewer, road repair and other maintenance services. This helps us to monitor in realtime the movement of service vehicles, their speed, the route they follow and duration of their halt at any specific location. In case, a driver diverts from the earmarked route, the controller, at the centre, will immediately send an alert to the operator and ask about the reasons.”
The civic agency has decided to integrate GPS of vehicles with the radio frequency identification (RFID) systems installed at residential dwellings.
“The RFID plates installed outside houses will read the tag or sticker pasted in front of vehicles and transfer the information to the command centre. This will help us to find out the exact time, place and duration for which the vehicle had visited the house. After attending a complaint, the staff will mandatorily need to upload real-time photographs of the place on NDMC’S 311 Officers app as a proof of completion of the job,” the official said.
The centre will record daily information of the number of people visiting inoculation centres, death and birth registration centres, property tax collection etc. The information will be forwarded to the departments for identification of grey areas.
For example, if more patients are visiting the inoculation centre in the month of November, then arrangements will be made for additional kits at that time of year. Similarly, the finance department will be able to do a comparative study of property tax collected from various residential and commercial areas.
The second part will include close monitoring of civic services with the help of 2,500 close circuit cameras installed at NDMC’S parking lots, smart poles, market complexes, service tunnels, schools, office complexes, parks and public places.
A separate team, with at least two officials from each of the NDMC’S departments, will work together to keep a close vigil on how things are working out on the ground. The civic agency aims to integrate these cameras with public address systems.
“These officials will watch videos and issue instructions to field staff . If CCTV grabs any illegal parking, hawkers or kiosks on main carriageways at CP, Bengali Market or any other place, the centre will immediately transfer information to the traffic police or enforcement department for quick action. If any sanitation staff is found not sweeping the road properly or a parking attendant is not present, then the public address system will be used to call out to them,” said the NDMC official.
New Delhi Traders Association president Atul Bhargava said the council should take the opinion of residents and shopkeepers before implementing such a big project. “For the success of a project, it is important the ground realities should be considered and we, as shopkeepers and residents of NDMC areas, will be in a better position to share all these issues.” Have you ever considered the price we pay for the inefficiency of the civic authorities in controlling mosquitoes?
First and foremost, we spend considerable amount of money every month on mosquito repellents — sprays, coils, mats, liquidizers —to keep the house free of mosquitoes. Earlier, mosquitoes used to invade us only after dusk and so repellents such as electric mats and liquidizers would be switched on only at night to ward them off. But today, the increasing population of ‘morning mosquitoes’, and the fact that dengue is spread by the female mosquito which is a daytime feeder, force us to keep the machines switched on through the day. Thus, while we end up constantly inhaling these insecticides, the mosquitoes seem to have grown immune to them.
We also buy repellent creams to keep the mosquitoes at bay when we go out—while some