Plan chalked out for Solan’s development

Ambika Sharma

Tribune News Service

Solan, January 24

With a view to improving overall environment of Solan town, the local Municipal Committee (MC) has chalked out a draft plan for the city’s development to ensure planned development and availability of basic amenities to all households.

Since the town has registered the fastest growth among the towns, unplanned growth has led to degradation of physical infrastructure and basic amenities like water, sewage and roads. It has 49,918 households with a rather skewed sex ratio of 862 females per 1,000 males and a literacy rate of 66.58 per cent.

While taking into consideration the population rise, the development plan was placed before the district administration by MC officials to work out its course of action. Once approved, it will be implemented in a span of five years.

DC Rakesh Kanwar said the MC had undertaken mapping of various utilities like the water, electricity, roads, parking, land use, etc., and prepared a roadmap for the future keeping in view the population rise.

It has now been sent to various departments like Revenue, IPH, Town and Country Planning, etc, for seeking their comments. The plan will thereafter be finalized and sent to the state government for seeking funds.

The development plan has studied the existing gap in various amenities like education, healthcare facilities, socio-cultural facilities, green cover, civil defence, telephone and postal and banking facilities, among others, significant issues.

The plan suggests the need for spatial planning while the gap in the quality of development is supposed to be met through sensitive urban design.

The city faces the threat of getting congested like Shimla with slum like conditions. Hence, this plan has been envisioned to take corrective measures. It has been noted that deforestation was causing air pollution and the limited road infrastructure created huge gap between the requirement and availability.

With the town having little resources to retain water naturally the shortage of water has become a perennial problem. Issues like pedestrian safety in view of the increased traffic have also been referred to as a growing problem with stress on pedestrian crossing.

The exponential increase in the vehicular traffic and the lack of parking areas has been pointed to as a critical problem requiring added attention.

The plan has also stressed the need for identifying appropriate places for further growth. The need for pollution management and preserving urban heritage has also been stressed. Proper waste management systems and stepping up institutional framework like public participation in decision making, e-governance and online public portals were the other areas which have been highlighted in the plan.