Workers to get IDs with radio-frequency chips

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: In the not so distant future, the City Corporation would be able to monitor its significant activities, mainly those involving house-to-house visits, from its main office. The Corporation has initiated steps to implement the comprehensive project for monitoring the solid waste management programme, which falls under the JNNURM project without delay. Though the Central-funded project was meant to be a monitoring plan to keep tab of the waste collection from houses under the Capital City Clean City project, the changed scenario might bring about changes in the project itself. Now that the Corporation has made plans to decentralise its waste management programme, the local body is drafting plans to make it useful for its other activities like tax collection.Under the project, radio-frequency chips would be installed in front of houseswhich would be connected to a central server in the Corporation office. The Cleanwell unit worker or the bill collector, having completed his business in a particular house, must swipe his/her Identity Card (which would be issued to them by the local body) to confirm the visit to the house. The system would enable the higher ranked officials to monitor a specific project or activity giving no chance for the employees to make excuses. The four-year-old solid waste management project was in bad need of a monitoring system all this time but the local body was unable to move an inch in this direction. And it has arrived at a time when the whole solid waste management programme itself is going in for major changes. ''Either we have to reject the project, which means we have to give back the money, or make use of the project in a feasible way. So, we are going ahead with the project expecting it to help us in future on many of our activities.Especially, property tax collection which needs to be intensified and a monitoring system would be helpful,'' said Deputy Mayor G Happykumar. It is the Kerala Sustainable Urban Development Project (KSUDP) that has been entrusted with the implementation of the plan. The tenders for purchasing the radio frequency chips and for creating the identity cards have been placed. Once the Corporation decides on a consultant for its e-governance project, the monitoring system would move ahead on a fast-track under its guidance.