Mangaluru: Commissioner of Mangaluru City Corporation, Dr H N Gopalkrishna held a public hearing on the allocation of budget for the next financial year at the MCCpremises here, on March 1.
Addressing the gathering, Dr Goplakrishna said, “We have secured Rs 400 crore from the Central Government, Rs 250 crore from the State Government and Rs 150 crore of revenue has been collected from the city. Before we decide how to spend this budget, the opinion of the public has to be heard.”
Majority of the suggestions demanded construction of bus stands, proper foot paths, LED street lights that are energy efficient, repairing costly equipment that is out of order, building new parks and maintaining the existing parks and planting saplings to promote greenery in the city.
Very few citizens had turned up to make the city a better place to live. Suggestions to increase the revenue were also made. Gopalkrishna Bhat said, “All hoardings should be taxed, parking should not be free but unemployed should be employed to collect parking fee, traffic signals that are not in use should be moved to another location, unwanted streetlights should be switched off.”
Joe D’Souza said, “Petty shops should have a license and fee should be collected from them. There is a lot of water being wasted, steps should be taken to avoid water wastage and to auction the equipment and vehicles that is not being used.”
Rajendran Kumar said, “Use bus stops to display advertisements and find sponsors to undertake any MCC project.”
Though there were suggestions to build a better city, the few citizens who have turned up, took the opportunity to air grievances too. Joe said, “Many car washing shops that have come up in the city leave the detergent laced water in the drains, this is harmful to nature. There is a unclean creek near the City Hospital which breeds disease spreading mosquitoes, banners that block the visibility of the driver and policemen should not be allowed, illegal water connections should be disconnected, some of the sign boards are destroyed when they can be utilised by moving them to a new location and drinking water is being wasted by defective pipelines.”
Rohan said, “Clean MCC surroundings, build heritage sculptors in the city, promote greenery by planting saplings, construct footpaths and dividers in a such way that they can accommodate plants and trees, hire a company to maintain the greenery by watering them, allot a place so that police stations can use them as a yard to keep seized vehicles and vehicles involved in accidents, this way we can avoid the police stations looking like dumping yards.”
Now that the suggestions are voiced, the next step has to be taken by the MCC. A people friendly budget fitting for a ‘smart city’ is expected.
DIC Joint Director Gokuldas and others were present.