Bhubaneswar, March 5: The housing and urban development department has formed a six-member task force to ensure that various pending development projects are finished in time.
The team, which has been named as the Bhubaneswar Task Team, will have top officials from local government agencies, such as the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC), the Bhubaneswar Development Authority (BDA) and the Bhubaneswar Smart City Limited (BSCL). The team members have already been assigned respective tasks that are to be accomplished on time.
According to the plan, deputy civic commissioner Srimanta Mishra will look after environmental management, BDA's assistant town planner Omkar Mohanty will look after projects related to affordable housing and BMC's executive engineer Pradeep Sagar Duria will take care of implementation of storm water management in the city.
BDA's assistant town planner Suparna Suravita Das will look after heritage sector improvement, BSCL's general manager Binaya Kumar Das will look after the solar city project and BDA's assistant town planner Sambit Shovan Mallik will take care of integrated special planning to ensure proper co-ordination between agencies.
"We are about to implement the smart city project. At such a time, it has become necessary for us to look after various pending projects as well. We have appointed the officers, who will specifically look after the problems and come up with solutions to execute the projects in time. The officials will get all possible support from us," said an official of housing and urban development department.
The Union urban development ministry had last year notified six new rules for environment management, such as the Plastic Waste Management Rules, 2016, the e-Waste Management Rules, 2016, the Solid Waste Management Rules, 2016, and the Construction and Demolition Waste Management Rules, 2016.
"A robust plan is needed for implementation of all these new rules in the city. We need to take the help of various stakeholders, including ground-level agencies, for effective implementation of the new environment management rules. We have already initiated the process for implementation of some of these and will look for maintaining the same in the future," said Mishra.
Similarly, to execute the affordable housing projects in the city, the administration has decided to identify and partner with non-profit organizations for social mobilisation of the beneficiaries for the project, formation of housing societies and link up livelihood and economic development programmes.
"There is a need to take up development in a sustainable manner. We are implementing the smart city project. But it does not mean that we will leave out the pending projects. The execution of the pending and other new and ongoing projects is necessary for integrated development of the city. The formation of the taskforce will help attain the goal," said mayor Ananta Narayan Jena.
Patia resident Mitrabhanu Mahapatra said that it was a good move of the administration to have a specific team for execution of various development projects. "The formation of the team is a good move, but they should also be provided with all help and should be asked to do their job in a timely manner. I hope the team will do their job and come up with fruitful results," said Mahapatra, a retired government employee.
