Mayor Firhad Hakim on Friday expressed his anger over the “very slow” progress of the assessment of waterbodies in the city. Hakim said he would showcase officials of the assessment department of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) for the slow progress.
During his weekly phonein programme “Talk to Mayor”, a caller complained that work to restore a waterbody along the Diamond Harbour Road that had started five years ago was yet to be completed.
Hakim had earlier spoken about the plan to carry out a proper assessment of waterbodies and enlist details about them in civic books.
The idea was that the availability of ready records would make it easier to prevent the filling up of waterbodies.
The plan is to give unique assessee numbers to the waterbodies. An assessee number is a number assigned to any building, vacant plot or other properties by which the property is recorded in the civic books.
“The work about assessment of all waterbodies is being done by the assessment department at a very slow pace. I will showcase officials of the department,” he said. “Commitment to the people is essential. They are getting paid from the taxes paid by people. They cannot just come and go,” he said.
“Either they will stay or I will stay as the mayor,” a visibly unhappy Hakim said.
An official of the KMC said that at present standalone waterbodies have an assessee number only for them, but waterbodies inside a property do not have separate assessee numbers. They have the same assessee number as the property. “It is not possible to distinguish a waterbody by looking at the assessee number at present. We are trying to create a number for waterbodies that will help identify them by just looking at the assessee number in any document,” said an official.
The environment and heritage department of the KMC is also working on a project of geo-tagging the waterbodies along with details about their exact location and measurements.
“I am still determined that all waterbodies will be assessed. No more waterbodies will be filled up,” he said.