Journalism of Courage
Following in the footsteps of their counterparts in Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) and Pune Zilla Parishad,elected representatives of the Pune Municipal Corporation have made an official demand for laptops.
In a proposal tabled in the standing committee,NCP corporators Kishore Vitkar,Usha Kalamkar and Meenal Saravade said,The twenty first century is Information Technology (IT) era and the PMC also makes use of computers in a big way for office work. All documents are prepared on the computer. Many corporators in the recently elected general body are educated and highly qualified but there is no scheme for corporators to be given laptops for official work.
The PMC should take lessons from BMC and Pune Zilla Parishad and provide laptops to all its 157 elected representatives so that they can access official information,communication,reports,meeting agenda via computer and push for a paperless office, Vitkar said.
The proposal would come up for discussion in the October 3 meeting of the standing committee.
Civic activist Vijay Kumbhar,however,was skeptical of the move. He said, Elected representatives are demanding laptops today and in future will ask for air conditioned cars. I fail to understand that if the corporators speak about public service why do they insist on use of public money to meet their own interest? He added that all the corporators can afford laptops and should get them using their own money.
Kumbhar also expressed doubts over corporators ability to use laptops effectively. If the PMC decides to provide laptops to corporators,they should train the corporators and hold an examination for them too. Those who are able to pass should be given laptops,otherwise it would be a waste of public money, he said.
He added that the PMC has been providing blackberry phones to office-bearers for the last few years but no one can say performance of corporators had improved after they got blackberry phones from public money.
