The ambitious Geographic Information System (GIS)-enabled mapping project for the city corporation has been dropped.
The scheme, undertaken by the Kerala Sustainable Urban Development Project (KSUDP), with ADB funds, was one of the fundamental components of e-governance.
The KSUDP had earlier allotted the work to a Mumbai-based agency which had completed door-to door surveys in some of the wards in the corporation.
However, the agency’s service was terminated following its poor quality of work. The termination of the project will badly hit the implementation of the e-governance programme in corporations.
“After terminating the service of the Mumbai-based agency, new tenders were not floated to find another agency”, said a corporation official.
The GIS mapping has been designed to help the civic authorities track the location of buildings and important installations and also pursue building tax defaulters.
“The termination of the project will definitely affect the implementation of the much-awaited e-governance programme.
The system could have been effectively used in streamlining the new tax assessment system which would have helped in boosting revenue generation of the cash-strapped corporation”, said a top functionary at the revenue department.
The digital mapping will track all buildings, roads, individual properties, trees, drains, canals and street lamps.
The plan was to upload the survey details and the 3 D digital map of the city on the corporation’s website.
As digital mapping of the city and an information back-up is a prerequisite for obtaining assistance for cities from national and international agencies, the civic body may now find it difficult to obtain external funds.
“Many of the KSUDP and JNNURM projects had failed due to the lack of a decentralised implementation system. If the project were to be implemented by the local body, it would have successfully completed it by now,” said K.J. Sohan, chairman of the town planning standing committee.