Sunday, Mar 14, 2004
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Kochi
By Anand Haridas
KOCHI, MARCH 13. The Greater Cochin Development Authority (GCDA) is working on the projects for the next financial year, to be discussed at the general body meeting to be held on Monday. The meeting sounds ambitious since the GCDA does not have any resources in sight for implementing any of these projects. More than 35 projects are supposed to be discussed at the general body, which will be attended by MLAs and the District Panchayat president among others. One of the important projects to be taken up for discussion will be the preparation of a `Vision Document for Greater Cochin Region'. This envisages conducting more studies into developing the outskirts of the city. The current trend of people moving out to suburbs like Aroor and Vaikom had brought these places also to the purview of city planning, said Antony Isaac, GCDA chairman. The other main projects that will feature in the discussions include the construction of a luxury apartment in the plot given to the GCDA on Foreshore Road, preparation of a digitised map using aerial photography for the Greater Cochin Region, setting up a local urban observatory, preparing a master plan for airport and its environs at Nedumbassery, building a city centre fly-over from the Jawaharlal Nehru International Stadium to the Kerala High Court junction and overbridges at four important points - Kundanoor, Vytilla, Pipeline junction and Edappally - along the National Highway. The GCDA has already completed the designs for the proposed overbridges at four traffic junctions in the National Highway and a fly-over. The study made by RITES, which the GCDA has placed as the base for its proposals on traffic-easing schemes, pointed out that the stretch from the Jawaharlal Nehru International Stadium, Kaloor to the High Court is the busiest one and that the construction of a fly-over as a parallel traffic route will ease traffic in this stretch considerably. According to the initial draft, building overbridges at Edappally, Palarivattom, Vytilla and Kundanoor junctions along the Aroor-Edappally bypass on the National Highway as a solution to ease traffic snarls was a Rs.65-crore project. However, in the new scheme, only a token Rs. 10 lakhs has been marked out for the project. Another Rs. 10 lakhs each has been earmarked for building overbridges and setting up a local urban observatory and Rs. 50 lakhs each for preparing the `vision document' and development of the airport region. Even while setting up goals for the future, the GCDA is not sure about the source of funds. "Once the outstanding dues are cleared, we can easily avail of loans as most of the banks are willing," Prof. Isaac said. For the time being, the GCDA need to settle the dues it owes to the Syndicate Bank before going for a new one. The GCDA owes about Rs. 18 crores to the Syndicate Bank and about Rs. 20 crores to the Housing and Urban Development Corporation (HUDCO) in principal amounts itself. There had been talks about a one-time settlement with the bank and the GCDA had about Rs. 12 crores to be collected from land sold. However, chances of settling the account during this financial year looked quite bleak, Prof. Isaac said. Even though the chairman and the secretary represented the GCDA at a meeting with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) held recently in Thiruvananthapuram, funds were promised only for the Corporations. The Kochi Corporation, along with four of its counterparts, is expected to get Rs. 330 crores for development activities.
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