Kakinada: Underground drainage, underground power cables, roads widening, parking complexes, parks, sufficient water projects, completing railway over bridges are amenities required to convert Kakinada into a Smart City. The Smart City Task Force, headed by the district collector H. Arunkumar, consisting of 11 departments suggested their plans for taking steps to make it to a smart city.
Roughly around Rs 200 crores can be released for Kakinada's development, which is pensioners' paradise. The government has started planning to turn it into smart city. Officials have invited tenders for consultants to draw a plans. The Centre has selected 11 consultants who are experts in drawing plans for Smart City. The consultants should submit their tenders on or before August 31. Meanwhile, the internal Task Force committee convened a meeting with taskforce members to discuss on the issues for the smart city on Saturday evening.
Mr Arunkumar suggested the taskforce members to draw plan in 18 core issues for the purpose. He gathered the issues from the members of the task force of various departments such as APSRTC, transport, roads and buildings, national highways, director of ports, Kakinada Municipal Corp-oration, railways and other related bodies. APSRTC Regional Manager C. Ravikumar sought seven acres of land for constructing a RTC Depot by shifting existing depot.
Transport officer T. Ravikumar also sought land for driving school, driving track, FC testing centres and others. The police officials advised that parking complexes should be needed to ease the traffic on the main roads. At present the KMC officials are widening the main road by 10 feet on each side for three kilometres length.
Kakinada Municipal Commissioner S. Govinda Swamy said that already a master plan is being prepared for the city and the smart city plan and the upcoming consultant's plan would be discussed on the smart city plan.
