Thiruvananthapuram city en route to smart tag

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Smart City Thiruvananthapuram Limited (SCTL) project, which has gathered momentum in the capital, will witness a slew of projects in the coming months. The city corporation is all set to introduce open gyms at a cost of Rs 40 lakh which will be the first project under the scheme. It is currently under the execution stage. The other projects include sprucing up public toilet facilities, setting up information kiosks, drinking water kiosks, e-autos, public bike sharing facility and solar panels.  The vision of the multi-crore project is to ensure the capital becomes inclusive, safe and accessible while keeping intact due respect to its heritage and culture.

According to Corporation officials, tenders have been finalised and the project is at its execution phase. Procedures to finalise the toilet renovation and information kiosk projects is in progress and is expected to be completed soon. The e-auto, bike sharing and solar panel projects are at the evaluation stage."Two bidders have expressed interest in the bike sharing project while e-autos have received four. Since these projects will be implemented on a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model,  we are evaluating them closely to select the most feasible proposal," said a corporation officer.

The projects including new toilet construction and bus shelters are awaiting technical sanction. The water kiosk is at a tendering stage. "We expect to complete the open gym as it does not require much civil work," the officer said.

SCTL has already selected the location for installing open gyms and child play equipment under the smart city ABD programme at three main places in the city - Ponnara Sreedhar park near Thampanoor railway station, Sree Chitra Thirunal park and Sreekanteswaram park at East Fort. The smart city projects have been included under urban basic services of area-based development (ABD) projects and cultural identity and heritage component.

A monitoring committee called citizen forum was constituted under the Smart City Projects which will be responsible to monitor the progress of each project under SCTL. The citizen forum meeting, being held for the first time, has been scheduled for Monday which will be headed by Mayor VK Prasanth.       

The citizen forum is a 40 member advisory committee consisting of prominent personalities like MP, MLA's and technical advisors. With their wide reach the committee will be able to promote our project concept, said Sanoop Gopikrishna, SCTL general manager.

Of Rs 1,521.9 crore, around 90 per cent amount has been allocated to the Area Based Development (ABD) component, which will focus on the core city area, comprising the East Fort, Chala, Thampanoor and Chenkalchoola stretch.