The smart city Belagavi officials it appears has forgotten about industrial estates in Udyambag. Not even one single project seems to have been planned or executed to make industrial areas smart and hence the infrastructure will become dumber by the day as no government organizations are making any effort in improving the facilities for industries in Udyambag.
There are no recreation facilities like a garden etc or even basic facilities like toilets. Most roads in Udyambag have more potholes than road. Most of the roads don’t have street lights and there are so many industries employing women coming from far off places.
A lot of raw materials and finished goods are transported from and to from various industries in Udyambag industrial estates and vehicles and the goods that they carry are getting damaged.
Most industrial units don’t have piped water supply. There is no proper drainage system in most parts of Udyambag and nallas are not properly maintained with the result that whenever it rains heavily water enters the industrial buildings and creates a huge loss of raw and finished materials.
The nalla beside BEMCO has been clogged with rubble dumped over a period of time as it has become a no man’s land. There is not even one garden in the whole of industrial estates in Udyambag which should be done as part of smart city Belagavi.
Most of the industrial enterprises in Udyambag pay their property tax to the municipal corporation of Belagavi regularly but not even one basic service is provided properly by the corporation to the various industrial estate of Udyambag Belagavi.
GST varying from 5 to 28% is remitted by industry which is shared by state and central government equally. The revenue from Belagavi is second only to Bangalore. Huge remittances are made to the excise department by the industries in Belagavi.
In spite of so much taxes being paid periodically by the industrialists of Udyambag, they are the most neglected by the political and bureaucracy alike.
A lot of irregular things are happening like schools and colleges have come up in the industrial estate in Udyambag. A lot of entrepreneurs are unable to take a loan from KSFC because KIADB has not renewed the lease agreement with BEMCIEL.
Karnataka state financial corporation has been formed to help entrepreneur s and industrialists by giving them financial assistance with low-interest rates of about 4 % onwards.
Entrepreneurs are made to run from pillar to post from all government departments like a corporation, BUDA, pollution board etc for building permission which may take several months. Entrepreneurs are harassed whenever government schemes are to be availed like subsidies, exemption from taxes, etc.
All in all industrialists in Udyambag are finding it very difficult to manage their day to day affairs because of the lackadaisical attitude of bureaucracy and politicians alike thereby hampering growth and employment potential to citizens of smart city Belagavi which has 7 engineering colleges and 2 medical colleges and numerous other colleges like polytechnics, science, commerce etc which offer abundance talent most of which gets translocated elsewhere.
Who’s the government means?
Local area developer is municipal corporation.
Highways developed by pwd or cpwd.
Employees of both organization closed their eyes and ears.
Citizens have no willingness or have guts to question responsible and concerned employees and local leaders.
If this is the ground reality, there cannot be better infrastructure available in place.