Читать книгу Transforming Kolkata - Neeta Pokhrel - Страница 6

Covering over 5 million permanent residents and another 6 million estimated floating population, the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) has continued to serve the citizens of Kolkata. Even though it has done a commendable job in the past, there is a lot of scope for improvement and perfection. It’s time that we start dreaming big for the city. A city of Kolkata’s history, heritage, and lineage deserves to be rated world class in the quality of life it offers. We begin our humble journey with this ambitious but achievable vision in mind. And we are happy that partners like the Asian Development Bank (ADB) have been helping us reach this vision. Together we have embarked on a large-scale development of the city’s infrastructure as well as strengthened its institutional capacity to serve its citizens better. We have to consolidate the work that has already been completed in sewerage and drainage, water supply, solid waste disposal, roads, management of parks and squares, and augmentation of greenery in the city. In parallel with improving infrastructure, we are working on institutional reforms and strengthening capacity.

We believe that a city of Kolkata’s size, importance, and complexity deserves a more empowered civic body with a wider ambit of services, which can be made accountable for most of the civic services and amenities that citizens expect in their day-to-day life. Such strengthening of the elected local government would also be in line with the 74th Constitutional Amendment. We want to ensure that the benefits of ADB funding and all other projects and development initiatives reach all strata of society and that progress is inclusive and equitable. Hence, we have put great emphasis on social sector development, including slum improvement and implementation of minority development programs. We do the same to improve the city’s health and hygiene through focused initiatives in vector control and overall improvement in sanitation and cleanliness.

“We believe that a city of Kolkata’s size, importance, and complexity deserves a more empowered civic body with wider ambit of services, which can be made accountable for most of the civic services and amenities that citizens expect in their day-to-day life.”

— Firhad Hakim, Mayor of Kolkata

Our constant endeavor is to ensure that this journey to prosperity and development would not put any additional burden on citizens. We strongly believe that by streamlining and simplifying the tax system, the KMC would ensure better compliance and coverage, so that its overall revenue targets are met without posing additional burdens on individual, complying citizens. We have introduced a modern regime of simplified tax structure that would root out corruption and ensure better compliance.

We promise to offer a transparent and responsive civic administration, leveraging the latest initiatives in information technology and e-governance. We also promise that all our councillors and civic officials would be in constant contact with citizens, would be accessible, and focused on providing better services to them. We thank ADB and other development partners who have been helping us on this journey to transform Kolkata City over the last 2 decades.

FIRHAD HAKIM

Mayor of Kolkata