Nagpur: After completion of one month in office, Mayor Sandeep Joshi on Tuesday interacted with media and highlighted the works done and to be done in his tenure.
Joshi said he interacted with citizens during his “Walk and Talk with Mayor” initiative and sought suggestions and complaints from them. “Over 100 Suggestions and Complaints boxes have been set up at various places in city. Through these boxes, citizens submitted their suggestions and complaints. The complaints were resolved zone-wise in ‘Complaints Redressal Camps’ organised across the city.
Major decisions in past one month:
Menace of private buses: Admitting the fact, the menace of private buses operating on city streets, the Mayor elaborated, “To work on the menace of private buses, Pravin Datke Committee is constituted. The committee will study and submit its report.
Tentatively we have identified six spots at various directions where these buses would stop in the outskirts. They would not enter into the city. NMC bus will operate to and fro these spots wherefrom it would pick up the passengers. Every care of the safety of the passengers would be taken.”
Encroachments on footpaths: Joshi said that NMC will not only clear encroachment on footpaths but will also repair them. At most of the places the condition of footpaths is very bad.
It needs to be attended, Joshi made it clear. It will be a part of encroachment-removal drive. “When I took over as Mayor, I gave priority to anti-encroachment drive,” Joshi said.
Public toilets: It was a long pending demand of people as they don’t have a place where they could ease themselves. “We are starting these public toilets to be run at 87 places and will be maintained by Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC).
It will start from Wednesday. We are thankful to Petrol Pump Dealers Association who are helping us a lot. At the same time there will be 57 urinals to be run by Corporation. The responsibility of cleaning the urinal will be bestowed upon the nearby shop.
A board will be displayed near that shop about putting responsibility on it,” pointed out Joshi and added there will be mobile toilets for female to be called as ‘She’. One will remain at Kriplani Point while others will operate at market places.
Dog sterilisation: The Mayor further said that dog sterilisation would be another priority. Dealing on statistics about the number of strays of dogs, he explained, “There are 90,000 stray dogs at this juncture. We have sterilised only 10,000. With this speed, the dog population would cross 1.5 lakh next year. It will create lot of problems. We can’t kill them and we don’t want to. We calculated the amount to be paid for sterilisation which was too much.
We discussed the issue with some NGOs, who came forward. We have to spend Rs 12 crore. But it will be done on warfooting. NGOs will monitor, plus the procedures will be performed under camera so that nobody should get involved in any scam.”
Open plots with garbage to be seized: The Mayor said that action would be taken against open plot owners where garbage is dumped. “There are several open plots people bought and did not do any construction work on it. These plots have become garbage dumping points.
Being in the middle of the city, it gives a wrong picture to everybody. We have decided to take action on such plot-owners.We will give them notice asking to clean the area, a board in that regard would be put on display at the plot.
A particular time limit would be provided. If the owner fails to do the cleaning work, NMC will seize the plot. I along with Municipal Commissioner Abhijit Bangar are working on it. In fact the first action we have decided to take on the open plot in front of Radhe Mangalam Karyalaya near Padole Square.”
Khau Galli to get functional from Jan 9, Gadkari to inaugurate: Finally, Nagpur Municipal Corporation has decided to start ‘Khau Galli’ near Gandhisagar lake, in front of Raman Science Centre.The Khau Galli will start functioning on January 9, 2020 when Union Minister Nitin Gadkari will inaugurate, informed Joshi.
He said, “Structure is ready near Raman Science Centre. Somehow things did not work and the structure remained unused. We got 78 applications and 32 stalls will be allotted. We will try to keep variety of stalls so that it can attract people.”
