Urban News

Hindustan Times  26.11.2010

Even as Delhi witnessed a preview of its harsh winter recently, the New Delhi Municipal Council has not yet come up with a single night shelter, so far. To make matters worse for the city’s poor and homeless, the 64-odd night shelters that were being maintained by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi’s Slum and Jhuggi-Jhopdi department last year, have also not started functioning yet.

This department has now been transferred to the Delhi government.

“Running these shelters is the Delhi government’s responsibility now,” said a senior Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) official.

The 64-odd shelters can accommodate 10,000 people.

Delhi chief secretary Rakesh Mehta said since it is the first time that the Board will be running these shelters, they are being provided with adequate resources. “A meeting was held last week to decide on the course of action. They will have to be provided field organisations to maintain these shelters. We will be opening them shortly,” Mehta added.

Till last year, there was a lone night shelter for women in the New Delhi area. It had 17 rooms and could accommodate 150 women. The men, however, had nowhere to go.

In 2009, the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) had one night shelter on AK Roy Marg but even that has now been converted into a school, following court orders.

According to the civic body, it is trying to chalk out a plan to turn another building into a night shelter. “Right now, we don’t have a night shelter. We will try to do something before December,” said a senior NDMC official.

However, NGOs working for homeless persons say the civic body doesn’t even allow them to put up tents for the homeless during winters.

“When we tried to put up tents near Connaught Place last year, the NDMC removed it,” said Paramjeet Kaur, director, Ashray Adhikar Abhiyan, an NGO that works for the rights of the city’s homeless.

The Deccan Chronice  24.11.2010

Nov. 23: Cities all over the country are growing, but local governments have been unable to keep pace with the growth and provide decent infrastructure. About 800 new residential colonies have mushroomed in the peripheral and surrounding municipalities within Greater Hyderabad limits. These colonies lack basic and civic infrastructure like roads, street lights, underground drainage and piped drinking water.

The cash-starved Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation requires `2,000 crore in Phase-I alone to provide these civic facilities. Though the civic body had proposed to rope in private parties to invest and develop the facilities, the project has been put on the back burner due to opposition from the elected body of 150 corporators in the GHMC.

The municipal corporation proposed to repay the private parties by increasing property tax by 30 per cent in the colonies where the civic infrastructure work would be taken up. The elected representatives rejected the proposal stating it will not allow any hike in taxes.

Experts in financial management in public utilities and urban development say it is the responsibility of the civic body and the government to provide basic civic infrastructure to citizens. They support the proposal to rope in private parties to put up the infrastructure.

It will take 15 to 20 years for the GHMC to execute the work estimated to cost `2,000 crore, given its present financial condition. It is imperative on the local body to provide the amenities at the earliest, and if it cannot do so, it should seriously consider the public-private route, experts say.

Mr Narasimha Murthy, a financial management expert, says the GHMC, which administers 625 square kilometres and a population of 80 lakh, cannot wait for its finances to improve before it provides the necessary infrastructure. It has to go for the PPP model even if it means increasing taxes.

However, he cautioned that the GHMC must ensure that the PPP project is time-bound or else the cost of the work will increase, leading to a further burden on the citizens. The additional taxes, too, should be for a limited duration and not a perennial affair. There must be a proper audit of all the costs and the private party should recover its investment over a limited period.

“Once the investment is recovered, the additional taxes should be withdrawn. If the elected body of corporators is against an increase in property tax, the GHMC can levy a special cess, such as an ‘infrastructure cess’, and collect it from citizens to repay the private parties. This special cess should only be to the extent of recovery of cost on PPP project,” Mr Murthy said.

Mr G. K. Rao, consultant with the World Bank and an independent financial management expert for public utilities, says the PPP model is used universally.

“I recently visited Afghanistan as part of a project to improve financial management in public utilities.In Afghanistan, the local bodies are adopting the PPP model. Providing civic amenities to its citizens is the fundamental responsibility of the GHMC and it cannot say it does not have money and sit quiet. It has to find alternative ways of extending civic facilities and PPP is one successful model in vogue all over the world,” he said.

Civic bodies like the GHMC mainly depend on property tax, trade licence and advertisement fees for raising financial resources. “The GHMC must increase its tax structure that should be confined to targeted areas wherein crores of rupees worth of private investment is being pooled in to take development works. Then the GHMC has to also concentrate on improving its revenues by bringing under its property tax net un-assessed and under-assessed properties. By roping in private investment, the GHMC will get sufficient time to strengthen its financial condition,” Mr Rao said.

The GHMC Commissioner, Dr Sameer Sharma, said all works in the city limits will be taken up in consultation with the city corporators led by the mayor and deputy mayor.

“We have tried to convince them of the need to go in for a PPP model for faster civic infrastructure development in the 800 colonies. The tax increment financing model is a successful strategy world-wide as the private developer is reimbursed by way of annuity,” he added.