THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The ambitious move by PWD to launch a comprehensive web portal, ‘Thottariyaam PWD’, to keep the public updated on the status of roads, bridges, and tourism centres and PWD buildings under construction, is yet to become fully operational.
Works Minister P A Mohamed Riyas had said that the public would be given access to the system by April. The project was inaugurated by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan with much fanfare. However, according to PWD sources, the testing work of the online portal, which has gone live, is still going on. The portal ‘www.thottariyaampwdkerala.gov.in’ is not familiar to many as the department failed to give much publicity to it.
“I was very curious about the portal. When I tried to access the portal to get updates on road projects in my native place, I found it hard to get the domain name ‘Thottariyaam PWD’. If a user gets access to the portal, there is an option for public registration for login purposes. But the registration process could not be completed and an error occurred. Similarly, there is an option for looking at the status of 6,156 ongoing projects and 16,084 completed projects. However, when I clicked on it, I could not see the status of any of the projects even after giving their details,” said M S Harishankar, a techie from Thiruvananthapuram.
The system is planned in such a way that the public can view the status of the action taken on complaints filed on social media or through the PWD app. The portal will have a history of important places in the state and videos of various tourist destinations. It contains a dashboard which has details of public works and tourism projects. Another feature of the portal is that the contractor can access it to view feedback from people which will help complete projects in a better way.
Meanwhile, a top PWD official said that the testing phase of the portal is underway and the process of updating details of projects is in progress. “Though the portal was launched in April, its testing is still underway as the admin side needs to give updates of the projects on a daily or a weekly basis. So if users are given access, then there is a possibility that the portal will slow down. So it will take three more months to fix it and allow access to the public. Similarly, it is true that we haven’t given enough publicity for the portal for the time being to avoid errors due to the testing process,” an officer said on condition of anonymity.