Civic agencies to meet every month for better coordination

Faced with complaints from the public on lack of coordination among various civic bodies in Bangalore as they go about their work, heads of these agencies will henceforth meet every month to share details of their projects. 

Additional Chief Secretary (Home) A K Pattanayak will chair the meeting wherein the civic agencies will discuss and exchange details about the present status of various projects and programmes lined up for next month. Chief Secretary Kaushik Mukherjee will review the progress and impact of these coordination meetings every three months. A host of civic agencies, including Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike, Bangalore Development Authority, Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board, Bescom, Bangalore Metropolitan Region Development Authority, Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation, Pollution Control Board and traffic police, function without being unaware of what the other was up to, resulting in chaos.  

These decisions were taken at a meeting of the legislature committee on petitions, headed by Legislative Assembly Deputy Speaker N H Shivashankara Reddy, in Bangalore on Friday. 

The committee had received complaints from citizens of Bangalore regarding various civic problems, including bad roads, tardy work, drinking water shortage, traffic jams, lack of civic amenities and pollution. It invited the chief secretary and heads of various civic bodies in Bangalore to work out a plan of action. “On scrutiny of these complaints, we felt a majority of them could be solved if there was a better coordination among the agencies. Hence we decided that the heads of these agencies should meet and share details on a regular basis,” Shivashankara Reddy told reporters.

Former minister Suresh Kumar, who is a member of the committee, said the onus of coordination among civic bodies was the responsibility of the chief secretary. The recent death of actor Ashok Kumar after falling into a ditch dug for repair of sewage line at Gavipuram, was a case in point for lack of coordination among civic bodies. The BBMP and the BWSSB had blamed each other for  delay in completion of the project, he said.

The meetings will also serve as a platform to jointly address the financial problems faced by the civic bodies, especially the Palike. Payment of dues to contractors and collection of property taxes will also be addressed, Suresh Kumar said.