Rosy strives to make Colombo a smart city | Sunday Observer

Rosy strives to make Colombo a smart city

22 April, 2018

Rosy Senanayake will go down in Sri Lankan history as the first Lady Mayor of Colombo City, the country’s largest Municipality. Rosy Senanayake rose to prominence when she won the title of Mrs World. Since then, she has gone on to make a mark, as a diplomat, a UNICEF Ambassador and also State Minister for Child Affairs. In her Ministerial role, she has proven to be a strong advocate on issues regarding women and children, and was a leading member of the women parliamentarians caucus in the Sri Lanka Parliament. She is focusing on several pillars to bring about a new City.

To ensure the efficiency of the Council she plans to focus on the Effectiveness of the CMC and Participatory Citizenship. She intends to involve the citizenry in planning, implementation, and monitoring the policies and activities of the Council, including holding Town Hall style meetings where the CMC will meet in public for public hearings once every quarter. The primary purpose of the smart city concept is to make Colombo efficient and smart. “We want to harness technology to eradicate corruption and make the CMC administration efficient.

Existing services

“We have formulated a plan to digitize several existing services and also introduce new facilities, ranging from digitizing property ownership details, online filing of applications for various approvals, apps for communications and dissemination of information, monitoring of garbage collection, smart street lighting and many many more initiatives.”

Priority will be given to tackling dengue, by identifying hotspots, using past data and the new app ‘Epi Hack.’ Rosy feels they need to establish sustainable solutions that can address the garbage issue, with permanent dumping sites and implementing projects such as, turning waste to energy, recycling, and addressing clinical and hazardous waste issues. Rosy plans to make maximum use of the CMC’s powers to ease the burden of traffic for those living and working in Colombo, by using shuttles, tackle parking issues, ear-marking land for separate parking areas for private vehicles, school buses and vans, and three-wheelers. Among other priority areas are, sanitation, clean drinking water, and toilet facilities, especially, for the underserved settlements.

Projects

According to a study conducted by Deloitte Consulting there are now over 1,000 smart city projects ready or under construction globally, and about 500 of these are in small and big cities around China.

“So, my vision is to bring Colombo to meet this growing global trend and be a pioneer in the South Asian region. Projects already operational in cities around the world have shown that the efficiencies accumulated thru smart technologies have resulted in quantum improvements in services, especially, at ground level,” she said.

Comments