Morung Express News
Dimapur | November 25
In April, this year, the Government of India and Asian Development Bank (ADB) had signed a $2 million Project Readiness Financing (PRF) loan for a project in Nagaland. The PFR from the ADB was for starting baseline assessment or drawing up plans for the Nagaland Urban Infrastructure Development Project (NUIDP) — a project proposed to improve and develop urban infrastructure in the state’s 16 district headquarters.
The main targets of the proposed NUIDP are to develop water supply, sanitation solid waste management and urban roads with climate resilient features and improved access to the poor and vulnerable in the district headquarters.
During the signing of the PRF in April, the ADB’s Country Head (India), Takeo Konishi said that it will “ensure high readiness of the ensuing project through preparing an urban sector strategy, undertaking feasibility studies and detailed engineering designs of selected subprojects and building capacity of state level agencies in project implementation, resource mobilization and anchoring reforms.”
As part of the PRF requirement, the Directorate of Urban Development, Nagaland, organised a ‘Stakeholder Consultation Meet’ with civil society organisations, grassroots leaders and Dimapur Municipal Council, alongwith the Project Manager and the project design consultants— SMEC, in Dimapur on November 25.
SMEC’s Team Leader for the project, Gyanasis Jena said that the objective of the consultative meet was to prepare management strategy for the infrastructure to be created in consultation with the stakeholders (community). Besides, the meet sought recommendations from the stakeholders to identify potential priority areas which require improvement.
According to him, the task included “discussing operational challenges and identification of infrastructural requirements by way of consensus building among the participants.”
Director of Urban Development Department, A Chenithung Lotha pointed out the development challenges facing urban centres in Nagaland vis-à-vis haphazard and unplanned urban sprawl, the peculiar landholding system, besides the lack of resources and challenging terrain.
At the rate at which Nagaland’s urban population is growing — 67.3 percent decadal growth (2011 Census) — he said, “Our urban centres will be unmanageable.” While the various Centrally-sponsored schemes have been of benefit to the state, he though added that these schemes “have their limitations in terms of coverage and funding.”
“Given this reality, what options do we have? That’s exactly what we are here to discuss,” he said.
