Pulling up its socks to ace the upcoming phase of Smart City Project, Ranchi Municipal Corporation is once again garnering suggestions from the denizens of the State capital to be used in drafting proposal for the same.
Kick-starting another round of public consultation on Saturday with the future flag-bearers of the society, civic guardians of Ranchi sat down with schoolchildren of the city, their teachers and parents to understand their ideas to make a smarter Ranchi under the urban overhauling initiative.
Students strongly raised demands of streamlining basic amenities to improve standard of living in the city, suggesting solutions simultaneously to remedy the prevailing issues associated with cleanliness, traffic and water supply in the city.
A student from Jawahar Vidya Mandir stated, “Auto-rickshaws hold dominance over public transport system of the city. They blatantly violate traffic rules and are even strident in defending these violations. Efficient public transportation models from other cities need to be followed in Ranchi too and auto drivers should be encouraged to follow traffic rules for smooth flow of traffic.”
Voicing his thoughts for a clean and green Ranchi, Pushpesh Prashant from JVM said, “A system should be devised to ensure that the recyclable packaging of commodities is returned to manufacturing companies so that they can recycle and reuse it. This will help in cutting down garbage littered on the city streets.”
“locally available facilities should be used for research of RMC in fields like solid waste management and waste disposal. Scientific disciplines like biochemistry will help greatly in this regard. Involving students in the process will also benefit us. Developing community leadership among the students of the city also needs to be focused on to aid in this direction,” said a student of DAV Public School, Bariatu.
Replying to the queries and suggestions, Municipal Commissioner Prashant Kumar stated, “We have to be more stringent with enforcing rules. Regarding auto-rickshaws, they will be colour coded soon to ensure that only those with required permits run within city limits.
Provisions for giving separate permits to pink autos are also in the pipeline for promoting them to increase competitiveness in public transport system in the city.”
Talking about research addressing the needs of RMC, he said, “Decision to initiate research in the direction can be made after taking stock of the available facilities and interested students.”
In this congregation, urban local body functionaries tried to gauge the response of students and teachers about developing Ranchi as an educational hub for Eastern India under the Smart City Project. The strategy was unanimously supported by the audience too, validating it to be put in the proposal for the next phase of the urban project.
Those present in the meeting were also asked to share their suggestions using social networking websites. “Although we successfully, conducted public consultation drives in the field, its presence on the online forum was dismal. The response garnered in the digital world gets noticed more, and we lagged in this regard.
So we are asking the denizens of Ranchi to voice their ideas on our Facebook pages and Twitter handle so this does not poses a problem in the upcoming phase of the Smart City,” said Kumar.