Overtaking all the smart cities that have been lauded as best performing cities in the state during its review meetings, the Tirupur smart city had grabbed third place in the best performing smart cities.

Top 20 best performing cities are selected by the Union ministry of housing and urban affairs to support the least performing cities under the mission.

It is one of the internal rankings prepared by the ministry and the ranking list was prepared based on several parameters including the value of tender issued, value of work orders issued, value of works completed, and value of utilization certificate submitted, a corporation source said. Tirupur has managed to secure 329.75 marks for its performance.

“Even though Tirupur is selected under the smart city mission only during the third round in 2017 and as many as 18 projects are already in implementation stage and another four projects are in work order issuing stage. Most of the projects were moved to execution stage only in the last couple of years,” Tirupur corporation commissioner K Sivakumar said.

The projects in execution stage includes water supply improvement scheme, construction of fish market, installation of solar plants and redevelopment of daily and weekly flower markets.

Explaining that most of the projects would be completed within 1 to 1.5 years, he said that visible changes could be seen in the city within a couple of years. Under the smart cities mission, they had created four parks at the cost of Rs 3.86 crore.

Further, he said that they could even perform better with the cooperation of the public, public representatives and stake holders of the projects.

Meanwhile, the Coimbatore corporation which has managed to complete highest number of projects – 18 works - in the state and was often lauded for its performance, has secured 179.9 marks and grabbed 23rd position in the ranking.

While the officials are clueless about how they went down the ranking, experts pinpoint the slow progress of the projects. Even though it has been four years since Coimbatore was selected under the smart city mission, no visible changes are being seen in the city, said the experts.

Meanwhile, sources privy to analysing the performance of the cities said that the ministry is in the process of developing a new formula and the performance of the cities would be assessed another time.

Published On : 12-02-2020

Source : Times of India