Team Herald
PANJIM: Disappointed over Panjim missing the bus for the Smart City project, the Corporation of City of Panjim (CCP) Commissioner Sanjit Rodrigues has squarely blamed the CCP Council’s decision of staying away from financial contribution as the reason for the result.
“One of the things which I felt was missing in our proposal was the financial aspect wherein the corporation decided not to fund or raise revenues or not to participate financially in the smart city proposal,” Rodrigues said while speaking to reporters adding, “the work had to be entirely funded by the State and Centre which went against us.”
THe list of cities that have qualified for the Central funds in the first round were announced on Thursday, Panjim did not figure in the list.
To a query, he said, “Our proposal will not be rejected it will lag behind, we have already qualified to be amongst the 100 it is how fast you take off in this race of 100.” Rodrigues said the financial aspect carried a total 30 marks in which Panjim failed.
“The CCP Council, in this round did not want to talk or discuss the financial
aspect,” he said. The Commissioner stated that the city can take enough steps to raise revenue.
“The council perhaps developed cold feet while discussing the financial options. They met three times but it was very firm not to contribute towards this mission,” he charged.
He said that even though CCP did not envisage that money in the coffers now, there can be ways and means to generate the revenue through user charges, betterment charges and there are various innovative ways of increasing revenue.
Further, Rodrigues said, the guidelines for Smart City were very strict. “These are proposals which have new type of selection, new type of government strategy, which have been adopted by the centre. Sometimes it takes time to percolate it down to the people of the lowest tier of democracy to understand what these proposals are all about and I think Panjim was such a case,” he said.
He stated that the council will have to take a decision sooner or later, “they can only postpone it for some more time so till you postpone the result may be the same”.
