BENGALURU: Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike and NGO Janaagraha have launched the My City My Budget campaign to make the city corporation budget more citizen-friendly. The focus of the budget this time will be to put an end to yellow spots (places of public urination) and to make the city pedestrian friendly. A budget bus and seven electric autorickshaws were flagged off on Monday as part of the campaign.
BBMP Commissioner N Manjunatha Prasad told media, Bengaluru has 14,000km of roads, but most of them lack pedestrian facilities, are congested, strewn with garbage, and so on.
"Bengaluru has a cerebral climate and people can walk long distances, but due to improper pedestrian walkways and facilities, they cannot. Due to this, even for small distances, citizens prefer to use their personalised vehicles. Thus, feedback is being obtained from people to make the city and pedestrian spaces citizen-friendly," he said.
All the feedback obtained will be included in the budget and necessary projects will also be undertaken for the safety of commuters and pedestrians.
It has been observed that most pedestrian spaces either have garbage piles, transformers and other obstructions, or are are dug up to lay optical fibre cables, the Commissioner added and assured that the 2020-21 budget will address and improve all these concerns.
The Commissioner said that there are 585 public toilets in the city against the requirement of 1,600. A campaign is also being undertaken to ensure that yellow spots are cleared and more toilets are built. Citizens can give their feedback either through WhatsApp (7022385666), visit www.yellowspots.in or the BBMP website up till January 7, 2021. Janaagraha launched the #MyCityMyBudget campaign as a pilot project in 2015. In 2017, a formal MoU was signed with BBMP. This year, 67,114 citizens submitted inputs.