Having already lost some time due to COVID-19 and other reasons, the projects under Srinagar Smart City Mission need to pick up more speed for timely completion.
This is important since the harsh winter is only some months away. Snowfall and freezing cold slows down to a large extent the pace of such work for months together.
As per the extended deadline, the Srinagar Smart City Mission, like other such smart city missions in the country, have to get completed by June, 2023.
Smart City Mission for Srinagar was approved by government of India in April 2017. Officials in Srinagar said that conceptualisation of projects, tendering and some other procedures were done last year, and this year the work on projects is going on for the last three months.
The officials must keep the unfavourable conditions like winters in mind and take full advantage of other favourable months by switching over to double shift, wherever possible now.
Hostile winter weather conditions have been a big disadvantage to major development projects in Kashmir and that is one of the reasons for non-completion of projects within the set deadlines.
In past the projects kept on getting delayed due to almost total stoping of work in winter, while there were some other factors also responsible for the delay.
Those at the helm of affairs must plan work on projects in such a way that the kind of work possible in winter is prioritised during that season.
The projects under the Smart City Mission include River Front Development, Water Transport, Road re-development, ICCC, ITMS, urban mobility, city beautification, central business district up-gradation, heritage conservation, Downtown renewal, cycle tracks, walkways, integrated solid waste management, Brari Nambal Development, and Dal Lake front development.
According to officials, the smart city mission is for urban renewal and retrofitting with the objective to promote the city; provide core infrastructure, give a decent quality of life to citizens and apply smart solutions to improve services and infrastructure.
Surely, the residents would like to have these facilities, so authorities should gear up and increase the pace of work so that the conceptualised Srinagar Smart City Mission becomes a reality in near future.