The Hindu 13.02.2013
CMC presents surplus budget
Parks to be developed with 1.20 cr.
Proposing a surplus budget for 2013-14 fiscal – the last
year of the current term — the Cuttack Municipal Corporation (CMC) on
Tuesday allocated a whopping Rs 1.20 crore to be spent in the city this
year for developing parks.
The CMC financial
committee proposed a budget estimating a receipt of Rs. 245.69 crore
with an opening balance of Rs 3.82 crore. It also proposed to spend in
the ensuing fiscal Rs. 245.52 crore leaving a surplus of around Rs. 4
crore.
While the opposition corporators preferred to
remain silent, some ruling BJD corporators, however, criticised the
budget saying the surplus was only shown in pen and paper and the budget
was ‘unrealistic’ keeping in mind that this was the last budget of the
current term of the Council. Most shocking in the budget proposals of
the civic body was that it remains silent on urban poverty alleviation
and employment generation. Similarly, the developmental works,
particularly on conveniences like drains, roads and streetlights have
not got due allocations despite the fact these are in a very bad shape.
“We
are going to address the shortcomings on these aspects by our ambitious
JICA project,” Mayor S.K. Ghosh said. The Japan International
Cooperation Agency (JICA) is going to finance a sanitation project in
the city with an estimated cost of Rs. 757.44 crore.
But
the project which was inaugurated two years after its announcement in
November last year, is still in limbo. Similarly, the budgetary
provisions in key sectors like health, sanitation, mosquito control, and
medical services are not encouraging as the financial committee has
proposed to spend a little over Rs. 10 crore on these sectors.