Building permit applications increase in TVM

Thiruvananthapuram: Hundreds are at the receiving end as the processing of building permit applications experience a slowdown at the city corporation.

The understaffed town planning wing with ill-trained officials is having a hard time using the recently introduced software IBPMS - Intelligent Building Plan Manag-ement System. The recent shift of the wing to a new place has almost halted its functioning adding on to the woes of applicants.

Around 400 applications are pending as network issue plague its activities.  

Meanwhile, protests are mounting against the move of the authorities to add one-day permit to IBPMS haunted by glitches. “Efforts are on to make it fully online. It will happen soon, and the-re are few glitches that are natural in any software," said an official of its IT wing.

All Kerala Building Designers Organisation president Kowdiar Harikumar said that the move to incorporate one-day permit to the new software is unacceptable.  

"We will express our protest as they dropped old software 'Sanketham' without any valid reason. Now some private company is being roped in for managing the software, which cannot even process applications entirely online," he said.

E-governance was introduced in the Thiruvananthapuram Corporation back in 2001, and later many software added to make the process entirely online to end corruption.

The civic body had been using Sanketham, developed by Information Kerala Mission (IKM), before the introduction of IBPMS. An official of the IT wing said that things would get better once everybody starts using the new software.