If Hyderabad gets placed among smart cities, it will be like another jewel in its crown.
A meeting on ‘Vision for a Smart Hyderabad’ was organised by Foundation for Futuristic Cities to prepare a base document for submission to the Telangana government.
Many shares their views on Tuesday’ on what would make Hyderabad a smart city’, which includes Representatives of NGOs, industry heads, politicians, government officials, academia and those working with the underprivileged.
Over time, Hyderabad has emerged as a city of choice due to factors such as improved facilities in various fields of life. Additionally, the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport which offers a good range of international flights, which improves its ranking on account of public services.
According to some representatives “Congestion-free roads with spacious pavements are the ones which bring Hyderabad as a smart city”. While others wondered how the city could become smart when it ranked among the top in child marriages and child labour.
The meeting took into consideration aspects such as like how dense of traffic increasing the stress levels, need for a bicycle and separate tracks for emergency vehicles, quality of people’s mental health, role of technology and other were discussed.
According to Union Labour minister Bandaru Dattatreya if good governance was accomplished, Hyderabad could evolve as a smart city in three years. Transparency and accountability were required to eradicate corruption, he said.
Stating that employment generation would be a top priority in Hyderabad, he decried the practice of hiring child labour. “Those aged between 14 and 18 years should not be employed in hazardous working areas,” Dattatreya said.