Trinamool board sets clean, green goals for Salt Lake

Suman Chakraborti | TNN 

Kolkata: Salt Lake’s residents can look forward to improved water supply, better roads, well-lit streets at night and more regular garbage clearance in the year ahead. 
These are the areas Bidhannagar Municipality’s new Trinamool Congress board will emphasise in its first budget which it will place before the civic body’s newly-elected councillors on Tuesday. Municipality officials saidSalt Lake’s civic budget for 2010-2011, the first ever by a Trinamool Congress board in the history of the township, will have an outlay of around Rs 53 crore. A vote-on-account budget was passed by the previous Left-run board before this year’s civic elections. 
Salt Lake’s civic development was paralysed during the tenure of the Left board ever since the Supreme court scrapped the Bidhannagar Municipality’s new property tax structure way back in the mid-2007. 
Now, the new Trinamool civic board earnestly wants to take up and solve this long issue. 
    Till the property tax dispute gets solved, the main areas to earn revenues for the civic body will be hoardings, parking fees and amusement tax. 
    “One of the main issue that we are going to stress on is providing adequate water supply. Residents of the town have been made to put up with inadequate water supply for a long time. We are in touch with the KMC authorities to provide us 10 million gallon water from Tallah. Also, we have decided not to introduce water tax. For all these reasons, a major allocation from the budget will be given to this sector,” said a civic official. The civic authorities are planning to set up a water treatment plant at the added area of Mahisbathan and for this, there will be an allocation of about Rs one crore. 
    The second most important area that the authorities have identified is the upkeep of roads. “Maintenance of roads have been an area of concern for the civic body over the years,” an official said. The authorities are planning to buy a hot-mix plant somewhere in the added areas that will be beneficial for road repairs and for this, there will be an allocation of about 50 lakh. The total allocation for road repair and maintenance will be around Rs 4 crore. 

 The civic authorities pay around Rs 35 lakh each year for streetlights. There are plans to switch over streetlights to solar and for this there will be an allocation of around 40 lakh. “We will be giving much importance on our clean and green city programme, that includes keeping the township clean and proper waste disposal. For this, we will increase our budgetary allocations on this sector,” an official said. Also, there will be allocations for preparing a map of the township’s existing sewer and drainage lines. 
    “The civic authorities will be trying to improve and develop civic infrastructure of the township and for this and the budget will have proper allocations,” said senior Trinamool councillor and former accounts committee chairman Ashes Mukherjee, who had suggested such proposals in the previous Left run civic board.