PCMC chief charts development path

Pimpri Chinchwad: The city is set to take a giant leap towards development in the next five years with the Pimmpri Chinchwad municipal commissioner, Dinesh Waghmare, promising to pump in Rs22,695 crore from the corporation budget and financial grants for different projects.
The primary focus area would be the 'infrastructure development plan'. Making Pimpri Chinchwad self-reliant in water supply in the next two-and-a-half years, improving public transport, promoting tourism, increasing CCTV surveillance and better infrastructure facilities on fringe areas would be the basic goals.
Charting his priorities, the civic chief said the city should not face water problem for the next 15 to 20 years. The Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) would be resuming the stalled project of fetching water from the Pavana dam to Pimpri and promote rainwater harvesting in housing societies.
Using solar energy in PCMC buildings and residential colonies would be another priority. A processing unit for construction and demolition waste on the lines of a successful project in New Delhi would also come up, Waghmare said.
He said there would be zero tolerance for encroachments on footpaths. Making the city open defecation free by October 2, 2017 would be another goal.
In an exclusive interview to TOI, Waghmare said Pimpri Chinchwad was East Detroit. "It is one of the fastest growing cities. The city had a population of 1.5 lakh in 1986, which has grown to 22 lakh in 2016. The municipal area has expanded with the inclusion of fringe villages. Employment opportunities increased with the setting up of IT Park at Hinjewadi. Earlier, people stayed in Pune and came to Pimpri Chinchwad. Now, with better infrastructure and easy accessibility, the trend has changed," he said.
Though the city's basic facilities are good, there are infrastructure gaps because of migration of people. For this, PCMC has prepared an infrastructure development plan with focus on water supply, sewage and sanitation, public transport, storm water drains, solid waste management, sports and recreation, e-governance and telecommunication, environment, energy-saving and housing.
"The main focus of the plan will be water supply. A 24X7 water supply project is being implemented under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission for 40% of the area. For the remaining 60% area, we will be implementing a similar scheme under Amrut. A Rs 240-crore tender has been floated," he said.
Waghmare said, "The Scada (supervisory control and data acquisition) system would be installed for efficient management of the project. The district metering area would be developed for each water reservoir. It would help in sufficing the needs within the available water. We shall make efforts to be self-reliant in water supply in two to two-and-a-half years."
For public transport, PCMC would be spending over Rs15,000 crore with main focus on BRTS corridors. "We have started two corridors and the third one would be inaugurated in December. With wide roads in the city, BRTS projects have become successful. They have been appreciated by the World Bank. We shall operate 300 AC buses on all the four routes. In the next five years, 60% commuters will travel in public transport," he said.
The civic chief said the fringe areas were underdeveloped compared to some wards in the central areas. PCMC would be giving more funds to these areas for roads, streetlights, water supply and drainage lines. Elected office-bearers should help in this regard, he stressed.
Waghmare said another problem was defence restrictions on almost one-fourth area, where no development zone exists around 500m of the defence area.