Smart City Centers ensuring better safety of women on streets: Puri; other key points

Smart City Centers are helping in improved and efficient delivery of public services, said Union Housing & Urban Affairs minister Hardeep S Puri, while participating in a consultative committee meeting held in Surat. Terming the project as a unique component of the Smart City Mission, what he said has been elaborated here in ten points. 
 
1. Currently nine Integrated Control and Command Centre at Ahmedabad, Kakinada, Visakhapatnam, Nagpur, Pune, Rajkot, Surat, Vadodara and Bhopal have become operational. 
 
2. Puri said it has been observed that the cities are becoming cleaner due to monitoring of cleaning work through CCTV cameras leading to reduction in instances of thrown garbage, littering, urination in public and night time burning of garbage. Increase in traffic challans issuance indicates an orientation for better traffic discipline, he added. 
 
3.Further, he informed that Intelligent Transit Management System has helped Ahmedabad to improve its operational efficiency by reducing its operational cost while improving the service levels. 
 
4. According to him, Smart City Centers are also providing technological support in ensuring better safety of women on our streets, environment sensitivity of people, faster response and better preparedness for emergencies and disasters.
 
5. The Minister said that around 1350 projects worth Rs 50,000 crore have been tendered in the Smart City Mission, of which, work has begun or has been completed in 950 projects costing Rs 30,675 crore. Another 400 projects costing about Rs.20,000 crore are at tendering stage. 
 
6. Other projects being implemented in the mission are Smart Roads which optimize the utilization of space and are adding universal accessibility in 31 cities. 47 cities are implementing more than 120 MW of solar projects promoting cleaner energy. 
 
7. Development of public spaces like riverfront, water fronts, rejuvenation of city lakes and ponds are a priority of the mission, Puri said. 
 
8. One innovative feature of the mission is that municipal bodies need to leverage their financial resources by municipal bonds, value capture finance, PPP, multi-lateral loans etc. 
 
9. 98 projects costing Rs 6,000 crore are under implementation with Public Private Partnership (PPP). The PPP projects are getting good responses not only in the big cities but even in the smaller towns.
 
10. The Minister informed that making Urban Local Bodies financially self-sufficient is very important for sustainable development. The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs has also started a campaign to do the credit rating of cities, which has been completed in 412 cities, he said, adding that 155 cities have "investment grade".                   
 
In the meeting, presentations were made by CEO/representatives of Smart cities from Surat, Bhopal, Ahmedabad, Pune, Visakhapatnam, NDMC & Bhubaneshwar, showcasing the progress made by projects in various sectors like Smart class rooms (Visakhapatnam & NDMC), Social Equity Centre (Bhubaneshwar), Mayor’s Express (Bhopal), Disaster resilience mechanism adopted at smart cities in coastal areas.

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Notably, members of the Consultative Committee were also shown some of the projects in Surat Smart City like Bamroli Tertiary Treatment Plan, Althan Water Treatment Plant, Visible Improvement of area-Smart Road, Affordable Housing projects, Vertical Garden, BRTS (Gujarat Gas Circle), Surat Fort and SMAC Centre.