500 cams, revenue up by 88cr: Gzb mayor shares one-year ‘report card’

Ghaziabad: Mayor Sunita Dayal, who completed her first year in office on Monday, said the civic corporation undertook several initiatives — from installing a green crematorium to adding over 200 high-mast lights at vulnerable spots — during the term to make the city “safer and greener”.The cash-strapped corporation also improved tax collection in the 2022-23 financial year by nearly Rs 88 crore from the previous year, while Rs 500 crore worth of plots reclaimed from land grabbers.

“We completed one year in office on Monday. To mark the occasion, councillors across all parties renewed their oath to keep up the good work, which we did last year. I wanted to free civic land that for decades has been in the clutches of the land mafia. And within one year, we managed to reclaim 82,374 sqm of land valued at Rs 500 crore,” Dayal said.The Ghaziabad Municipal Corporation, the mayor said, moped up a “record” revenue of Rs 294.9 crore in the 2022-23 financial year (FY) as compared to Rs 206.7 crore in FY 2022-23.The corporation also began penalising violators found using, selling, manufacturing or stocking single-use plastic items and collected Rs 60 lakh in fines, Dayal said.At least 1,040 civic works related to drainage, roads and interlocking tiles were completed with an estimated outlay of Rs 72.6 crore. Under UP’s Safe City initiative, high-mast lights were installed in 222 areas, identified as ‘dark points’ vulnerable to snatches and robbery due to poor lighting, while 500 CCTV cameras were also installed and linked with an integrated command centre.To make the city greener, an improved wood-based crematorium also came up in Indirapuram.Dayal said this year, work on a working women’s hostel, a biodiversity park and seven other projects, cumulatively worth Rs 352 crore, will be initiated. Two solar plants are also proposed to come up at Hindon Eco Park (10 kW capacity) and Nandi Park (30 kW).

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