Kolkata Municipal Corporation

A senior civic official said: "Foot overbridges have to be set up on the basis of some parameters. But in the city, the bridges have been set up in such places where these are not required. As a consequence, the footbridges do not serve any purpose other than displaying advertisements," said the official.

"We are trying to regulate the installation of foot overbridges without proper planning. At present, we have stopped allowing advertising agencies to set up foot overbridges anywhere in the city," said Mayor Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya.

"We have already cancelled the proposals of setting up foot overbridges at Lindsay Street and Golpark," Bhattacharya said.

According to a senior health official, the state health department and STM have asked the civic body since 2005 to prepare a map identifying the areas prone to vector-borne diseases in the city but to no avail.

"This (the mapping) will neither incur a huge cost nor involve a large manpower. It can be easily done as most of the field workers are quite familiar with the breeding zones and vector-prone areas. The mapping would have ensured proper surveillance of the city," said the official.

According to the records of KMC health officials, some boroughs, including borough II, IV, V, VI, VIII, IX and X, are vector-prone zones.

This is for the first time in civic history that such a department has been constituted. The existing data processing department has been merged into the new department.

Earlier, the mayor-in-council members had cleared the proposal in a meeting held last year. Subsequently, the proposal was cleared by the state finance department. A senior civic official said a new IT cadre has been introduced. The IT department will have eight systems managers.

There will be deputy managers, assistance managers, managers, engineers, data helpers and clerks. Out of 15 deputy managers, nine will be posted at the data centre as it will operate round the clock. Two systems managers will look after data centre and networking activities, software application and data securities activities. One manager will look after work in the added areas. The official said IT professionals will assist the controlling officers and attempts will be made to turn KMC into a paperless office.

On Tuesday, TOI's report on KMC allowing hawkers back on Park Street pavements, shocked the city and made the civic authorities sit up and decide to put the decision on hold.

Mayor Bikash Bhattacharya himself is not sure to what extent the civic authorities should allow hawking on Park Street, the city's showpiece stretch. He conceded that the civic body was negotiating with hawkers' unions. "It's too early to speak on the issue. Though talks are on with hawkers unions, we are yet to come to a conclusion," he said.

The mayor assured that KMC would not allow hawkers to encroach the entire length of Park Street or flout guidelines. "I have asked the union leaders to hand us a list of hawkers who were in business prior to their eviction. That does not mean that all of them would be accommodated. We will have to take the decision very carefully," Bhattacharya said.

The civic top brass has decided to crack down on a section of hawkers, who have been flouting rules -- keeping two-thirds of a pavement free for pedestrians, doing business at least 50 metres away from all major traffic intersections and putting up no permanent structures for selling wares among other rules.

Desperate to check unlawful hawking, mayor Bikash Bhattacharya held a series of meetings with senior leaders of the hawker unions in the past one week and asked them to follow the norms set by the state government and the civic body to avoid `punishment'. KMC sources said the mayor, who is out of town at present, will take a decision once he returns early next week.

After marathon talks with the hawker unions, it has been decided that KMC would conduct a survey in areas, where a section of hawkers has been flouting rules. Leaders of the Hawker Sangram Samity and the union affiliated to Citu have agreed to cooperate with the civic authorities to discipline the errant hawkers.

Accordingly, the civic body will ask hawkers on Jawaharlal Nehru Road near Indian Museum to keep their wares on one side of the pavement, instead of keeping those on both sides. Similarly, hawkers at Gariahat have been asked to adhere to the norms, keeping in mind the safety of the Puja shoppers.

A section of KMC conservancy officials though felt that it would be an uphill task for the civic body to launch any anti-hawker drive before Eid or Durga Puja.

"We can hardly undertake any drive before the festive season is over," a senior KMC official said.

HAWKING RULES

• Keep two-thirds of pavements free for pedestrians
  
• Conduct business at least 50 metres from all major traffic intersections of the city
  
• Do not put up permanent structures

The applicants fulfill all the criteria given by the corporation, but the proceedings of the advertisings and parks department are causing the delay.

The KMC official said the companies would be given the go-ahead on the condition that they would not use the beautified portion for commercial purpose.

Although the proposed policy, prepared by a private consultant KPMG, is yet to be approved by the civic authority, discussions on the draft policy are on.

"There are some clauses that may decrease the revenue earned from the advertising agencies, but we are also concerned about the city. The draft policy has been submitted to the authorities concerned," a civic body official told The Indian Express.

According to the draft proposal, heritage buildings, hospitals, water bodies, tourist spots, educational institutions, Maidan area, the stretch of Council House Street, St John's Street, GPO, Calcutta Collectorate, Dalhousie Square Tank and its four sides, Writer's Buildings, High Court, Victoria Memorial, Town Hall and 21 other major road intersections of the city have been identified as `No Advertising' zones.

The draft proposal also adds that no signboard is to be located within 10 metres of major street corners. However, this particular clause has triggered disagreement between the advertising and town and planning departments of the civic body.

"This clause needs to be regulated. If hoardings and billboards are placed in a series with a gap of 10 meters between each, then the visual pollution in the city will increase. So, there are several proposals in the draft policy that cannot be implemented from the planner's point of view. We are trying to prepare a policy that can be fit for the city," said a senior civic official.

Moreover, the draft says the ecologically sensitive areas like the East Kolkata Wetlands have to be declared "no advertising zone." Although one can see that several hoardings and billboards have been put up in the area by KMC and the Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority.

Fee parking has already been started at 12 spots and the municipality plans to include more areas after Puja.

"The municipality earns Rs 40 lakh annually from the 12 parking zones," said Somenath Mukherjee, the finance officer of Bidhannagar Municipality. The parking rates for cars and bikes are Rs 5 and Rs 2 per hour, respectively.

Fee collection was started in a few spots in Salt Lake on an experimental basis in mid-2006.

This year, six more areas were added, including EC block, the swimming pool area in BF block and the stretch between Prasasan Bhavan and Mayukh Bhavan. Areas around City Centre, HSBC, Central Park, Unnayan Bhavan and AMRI Hospital also have fee parking.

The municipality is also planning to introduce night parking in residential areas. "We conducted a survey and found that around 550 households across Salt Lake park their vehicles on the road at night. We have decided to charge a monthly fee that can go up to Rs 1,000 for each car parked by the road. We plan to roll out the order after Puja," said Krishnamoy Ghosh, the executive engineer in charge of public health and engineers.

The chip will be provided by the civic body and any hoarding without this chip will be considered illegal.

It will contain details of the advertising agency, including its address, contact numbers, the size of the hoarding and the advertisement it is displaying.

These details will also be uploaded on the central server of the KMC.

"We will provide bar code readers to inspectors of the advertisement department," said MMiC Faiz Ahmed Khan.

Issuing Circular no 51, Municipal Commissioner Alapan Bandopadhyay has made it mandatory to get a clearance from the Parks and Gardens Department before constructing any permanent or temporary installation inside parks. The clearance is mandatory even for various departments of the KMC.

According to Member Mayor-in-Council Faiyaz Ahmed Khan: "On recommendations of local councillors, KMC permits construction of health centres, community halls and pay and use toilets inside parks. In many cases, gradually majority of the space is encroached." Khan added that many structures have been built inside parks without informing the parks and gardens department.

The civic body has now fixed norms under the Landuse Development Comprehensive Plan (LUDCP) Act that classifies the parks into small (1,500 sq meters), medium (1,500 to 7,000 sq meters) and large (above 7,000 sq meters) categories.

Only 10 per cent of a small park, 5 per cent of a medium one and 3 per cent of a large park can be used for other purposes. "According to the norms, only one-third of a park can be covered and no structure higher than 4 meters can be erected inside it," Khan said.

"We are conducting a survey to find out the utility of the existing structures erected inside the parks. Anything built for individual purpose will be demolished," Khan added. He said that temporary structures like pandals does not fall under this category.

Barely 48 hours after TOI reported how a pavement on Park Street the city's most prominent boulevard was sold off to hawkers by union leaders, the Kolkata Municipal Corporation and Kolkata Police launched an eviction drive on Tuesday and reclaimed all of the footpath that had been illegally occupied by 50-odd hawkers.

At 1 pm, when the direction of traffic flow changed from west to eastbound, six KMC trucks screeched to a halt on the right flank. Within seconds, nearly 100 men a mix of conservancy department staff and police constables -- swooped down on the unsuspecting hawkers doing brisk business at lunch hour.

The encroachers were taken completely by shock. And it took a while for their customers to understand what was happening.

"I had just ordered a plate of chicken momo when a swarm of men surrounded the stall and began confiscating everything in sight. There was pandemonium. Pedestrians ran helter-skelter, thinking it was mob rivalry," said Ashish Dey, a private firm employee who had come out for a quick bite when the eviction drive began.

It actually took some time for the hawkers to realize that an eviction drive was on. Having paid money ranging from Rs 45,000 to Rs 80,000 to union leaders affiliated to Citu for prime space along the high street, some actually couldn't believe they could be thrown out. "We even pay hafta to police. Why will they evict us," one of the hawkers had boasted to TOI on Saturday.

Around 250 youths will initially be enlisted for the force which will function under a joint commissioner of police in parts of the city that are manned by Calcutta police.

The youths, who will not carry arms, will help the civic body pull down illegal billboards and structures, prevent illegal felling of trees and littering of roads, and assist the police in controlling traffic where repairs of roads or sewers are on.

The personnel of the "civil force", which will be stationed in select pockets, will also be responsible for coordinating with the police station concerned in executing a civic order.

The civic authorities are unable to cover up the open sewer lines and drains as the work might affect the buildings situated close by.

The matter came to the forefront after a two-year old girl, Sabia, fell into the drain on Wednesday night and died near her residence in Ram Nagar Lane in Garden Reach.

Civic officials claim that the incident could have been averted had there been a cover on the drains. However, such attempts were not possible after civic officials found that the buildings were "dangerously" close to the sewer lines. Hence the civic body was unable to make a bearing to place the cover of the drains without damaging these buildings.

KMC had recieved proposals from private entrepreneurs for projects to convert around 3200 tonne of solid waste generated in the city per day to produce 54Mw of electricity, claimed Sushil Kumar Sharma, mayor-in-council for environment of KMC at a meet organised by city-based NGO, Concern for Calcutta.

Sharma clarified that the project was still in a  nascent stage.

Around 30 acres would be required for the project, and once a final decision was taken by the municipal body, global tenders could be called, he added.

The project was crucial as at the current rate of waste disposal, the city would soon require another 102 acres as waste disposal ground.

Mayor Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya said: "Traders manage to get a trade licence from the KMC and then do not apply for the NOC from the fire and emergency services department. From now onwards, if traders do not get an NOC from the department, we will not give them a trade licence."

Earlier, the fire and emergency services department had been asking the KMC to take prompt steps on the issue. Gopal Bhattacharya, director general, fire and emergency services said:

"Finally, the KMC has taken a right step. Most traders do not apply for fire licences and flout all fire norms after getting a trade licence from the KMC."