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As the Commissioner of the civic body, I wish to build quality infrastructure within the Corporation, providing essential basic amenities like clean water, proper sewage, sanitation, health and hygiene, street furniture, public libraries, community centres, adequate street lightings, safety through Digital surveillance, beautified parks, green stretches, smart model of transportation and enhance the overall aesthetics of the city for its residents, says Amit Khatri, Commissioner, Municipal Corporation of Gurugram in an interview with Ritika Srivastava of Elets News Network (ENN).

“Water Management is one of the key indicators of urban development. In a bid to ensure optimum utilisation of the natural resource, we have launched GuruJal.”

What are the objectives Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) is planning for the city’s overall urban development?

The Municipal Corporation of Gurugram, or MCG, is focusing on a holistic development across sectors, be it healthcare, water, infrastructure, roadways, environment or green spaces, sports, etc. Our objective is also to seamlessly deliver citizen services, be it in a physical mode or online.

What are the initiatives taken by MCG to ensure better services for citizens?

Among the several initiatives taken by the MCG, the major initiatives include online easy service delivery to citizens, improvement in civic infrastructure across the city, including the unauthorised colonies and sectors and an overall development to further enhance the urban development model that Gurugram has. Further, to create a better communication system with the citizens, MCG had launched call centre and online grievance redressal cells. There is also a provision of social media tracking of the delivery of e-services.

What is your vision as the Commissioner of Municipal Corporation of Gurugram?

As the Commissioner of the civic body, I wish to build quality infrastructure within the Corporation, provide essential basic amenities like clean water, proper sewage, sanitation, health and hygiene, street furniture, public libraries, community centres, adequate street lightings, safety through Digital surveillance, beautified parks, green stretches, smart model of transportation and enhance the overall aesthetics of the city for its residents.

Water scarcity is one of the biggest challenges faced by the environment today. How is MCG planning to focus on Water Management?

Water Management is one of the key indicators of urban development. In a bid to ensure optimum utilisation of the natural resource, we are working closely on the Guru Jal initiative. The flagship initiative works on an integrated water management, which focuses solely on safeguarding water and preventing it from getting exhausted. Through various citizen engaging activities and initiatives, such as Paanch Litre Chllenge, Water Treatment Expo, Jal Sansad etc., GuruJal is not only creating awareness among the citizens, but also moving towards fulfilling the objectives. MCG is also taking several steps towards water conservation and management such as rain water harvesting.

What ICT initiatives have been taken for citizens’ security?

Among our various steps towards providing safety and security to the citizens, the major ones include installation of CCTV across the city, across major locations as well as other corners. We have also had a tie-up with the Haryana and Gurugram Police for Command and Control Centre.

What are the methods through which citizens can address their grievances?

The citizens can address their grievances either by calling at the Call Centre, or by visiting the official website of MCG. On visiting the website, they have to click on the Grievance section and click on ‘Submit New Request’ and enter the details in the fields provided in the page. The major areas from which we receive citizen grievances include sewerage, sanitation, water supply and street light among others. We have recently launched a mobile application, functional on both Android and Apple systems, called Swachhta. Through this app, citizens can directly register complaint about a dirty place.

According to you, how has been the urban development of Gurugram and what are the areas of improvement?

Over a couple of decades, a lot of development has gone around in Gurugram. Be it road connectivity, metro rail, industrial infrastructure, power connectivity, transport and the service delivery through common serviced centres. However, a lot more has to be done and there is a long way ahead. The focus areas for the upcoming areas would be to improve the drainage system and rain water harvesting.

What is your message for the citizens?

The citizens indeed have a crucial role to play in the overall urban development of the city. I feel one of the pre-requisites for any city to evolve a Model of Development suited best for the city is Active Citizen Participation. I firmly believe that active citizen participation not only builds a spirit of cooperation and trust between the agency and the public but the reservoir of goodwill it generates can carry over to future decisions. Thus, I urge active participation from the Civil Society and to ensure that, we are soon opening more channels for active engagement.

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