En­gi­neers sug­gest novel ideas to make city smarter You can soon go boat­ing at Ghan­soli pond POP­U­LA­TION CEN­SUS IN CITY

Hindustan Times ST (Mumbai) - HT Navi Mumbai Live - - NAVI MUMBAI - Tas­neem Kausar ht­for­nav­i­mum­bai@hin­dus­tan­times.com G Mo­hi­ud­din Jeddy ht­for­nav­i­mum­bai@hin­dus­tan­times.com

Flamin­gos flock to Sa­gar Vi­har, Vashi, on Fri­day. As win­ter ap­proaches, flocks of flamin­gos mi­grate to the city.

The Navi Mum­bai Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tion (NMMC) held a work­shop at The Institution of En­gi­neers at CB Be­la­pur on Thurs­day for en­gi­neers to brain­storm on how Navi Mum­bai could be made a smart city.

En­gi­neers from var­i­ous in­sti­tu­tions such as The In­sti­tute of Town Plan­ners, The In­dian In­sti­tute of Ar­chi­tects, The In­sti­tute of Com­pany Sec­re­taries Of In­dia, The Vaikun­tha Me­hta In­sti­tute for De­cen­tral­ized In­dus­tries, The In­dian In­sti­tute of Ma­te­ri­als Man­age­ment and The In­dian Institution of In­dus­trial Engi­neer­ing, took part in the work­shop.

NMMC chief city en­gi­neer Mo­han Da­gaonkar pre­sented the achieve­ments of the civic body and con­sulted en­gi­neers, ar­chi­tects and other lead­ing fra­ter­nity on the Smart City projects.

Da­gaonkar said, “The NMMC aims to es­tab­lish Navi Mum­bai as an ex­em­plar for both cit­i­zens as well as other cities around the world. A place where ev­ery­thing we want to achieve will come to­gether: eco-friendly and sus­tain­able en­vi­rons, ef­fi­cient in­fra­struc­ture and an en­vi­able life­style.”

Da­gaonkar then listed a few chal­lenges faced by the NMMC, such as strength­en­ing the pub­lic trans­port sys­tem, pro­vid­ing ad­e­quate park­ing fa­cil­ity, en­sur­ing cit­i­zen safety and main­tain­ing a high-growth tra­jec­tory for eco­nomic de­vel­op­ment, among oth­ers, and sought their ideas on how th­ese chal­lenges could be over­come.

Those present at the work­shop brain­stormed and gave their opin­ions on var­i­ous projects.

They also spoke on how Smart City Navi Mum­bai could bring about a sig­nif­i­cant change in the lives of res­i­dents with im­proved in­fra­struc­ture and life­style.

A pro­posal to com­mence fish breed­ing and boat­ing at Ghan­soli pond was ap­proved at the Navi Mum­bai Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tion’s (NMMC) gen­eral body on Fri­day. The pro­posal, once im­ple­mented, will earn the civic body rev­enue of Rs56,000 a year.

The NMMC re­ceived seven bids for the ten­der. Of the seven bid­ders for the Bharat Ratna late Ra­jiv Gandhi Quarry pond at Goth­ivli, the con­tract was awarded to one Yo­gesh Patil of Goth­ivli vil­lage.

The NMMC, had, in the past, also in­vited ten­ders for fish breed­ing and boat­ing fa­cil­ity, but it re­ceived a poor re­sponse.

“The con­di­tion of the ponds in the city is pa­thetic and hence, the re­sponse has been poor,” said NCP cor­po­ra­tor Damyanti Achre, adding, “If the civic body cleans up the ponds, sev­eral bid­ders will be keen to take up the con­tracts.”

Congress cor­po­ra­tor Vai­jayanti Bha­gat called for im­me­di­ate ac­tion Fish breed­ing and boat­ing facil­ties at the Ghan­soli pond will earn the civic body rev­enue of Rs56,000 a year.

to save the ponds.

Shiv Sena cor­po­ra­tor Kishore Patkar said that blam­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion alone is not go­ing to help. “We need to cre­ate more aware­ness on eco-friendly idols for im­mer­sion dur­ing Ganeshot­sav and Navra­tri cel­e­bra­tions,” said Patkar.

How­ever, NCP cor­po­ra­tor Anant Su­tar said, “Im­mer­sion of idols will con­tinue as it is our cul­ture. But the ponds need to be reg­u­larly

cleaned. They have not been touched for five years, re­sult­ing in silt and garbage pol­lut­ing the pond. Who will eat fish from such a pol­luted pond?”

Mayor Sud­hakar Son­awane in­structed the ad­min­is­tra­tion to not wait till May to clean the ponds be­fore the mon­soon. “We all need to be­gin work on it im­me­di­ately. In fu­ture, we should also look at the pos­si­bil­ity of im­mer­sion in the creek to pro­tect the ponds.”

The NMMC is preparing the Na­tional Pop­u­la­tion Reg­is­ter (NPR), a data­base of the iden­ti­ties of all In­dian res­i­dents.

Civic chief Di­nesh Wagh­mare said, “The gov­ern­ment has or­dered the up­da­tion of NPR and seed­ing of the Aad­haar num­ber in the NPR data­base. The gov­ern­ment de­part­ments will use it for se­lect­ing ben­e­fi­cia­ries for var­i­ous schemes. Our per­son­nel will be go­ing door to door to col­lect in­for­ma­tion of all the res­i­dents from ar­eas un­der the NMMC’s ju­ris­dic­tion. We re­quest all to give in­for­ma­tion on the queries asked and co­op­er­ate in this work of na­tional im­por­tance.”

BACHCHAN KU­MAR

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from India

© PressReader. All rights reserved.