Walls of hope: Kohima gets colourful revamp in race to Smart City

Kohima: Striving to win the Smart City race, streets of Kohima has got a colourful makeover as residents participated in a wall painting competition, which was organised as part of the ongoing assessment of the Ease of Living Index (EoLI) survey. Based on the vision for Kohima Smart City, all 19 wards under Kohima town undertook the exercise turning the ordinary walls of the streets into walls of hope.

Addressing a press conference on Friday, Kohima Smart City Development Limited (KSCDL) CEO Kovi Meyase announced the winners of the competition. He revealed that the competition was judged on four criteria — creativity & originality; message/slogan; artistry; and design & concept.

The top three winners of the competition are — New Market (Ward 8), High School (Ward 1), and Officers hill & hospital area (ward 10), bagging the first, second and third positions, respectively. Two consolation prizes will be awarded to Lower Chandmari (Ward 13) and Agri & forest area (Ward 17).

Curated to engage residents as part of the citizen participation, the winners of the contest will be awarded on March 2 at the KSCDL office. While all winning teams will be awarded with cash prizes, the top three winners will receive a citation each.

In regard to the ongoing assessment on the Citizen Perception Survey, Meyase revealed that 2,338 citizens have so far participated in the survey, out of which 400-500 persons were assessed offline. With the threshold value of 1,076, the participation now stands at 215%. And with just few hours remaining, the window of the online survey at EoL2019.org/citizenfeedback will close by February 29.

Highlighting the various activities made by the KSCDL to engage citizens, Meyase said that all sections of the society from students to street vendors and daily wage labourers were sensitized about their contribution towards assessing the city. He further appealed the citizens to take the opportunity to participate in the survey.

Meanwhile Avelu Ruho, joint CEO of KSCDL, said that thje survey is a good opportunity for citizens to raise their concerns about the city, as the survey is directly manged by the Ministry to assess the requirements of the developmental activities in the city.

She said that it was intriguing to learn about how the citizens’ perceive about the city they live in, particularly during offline assessment. She pointed how street vendors, most of whom are women, have a common perception that the state has ample opportunities of employment.

Contrary to it, she said that most students perceived that the state has less job opportunities. Ruho also noted that most of the citizen’s who participated in the survey, raised the need to have recreational facilities, open spaces and green covers in the city.

It may be recalled that during the EoL survey conducted by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) in 2018, Kohima was ranked as the second most ‘unlivable’ city in the country. Ever since the infamous tag, Kohima have been striving to win the race. The state was also ranked the top among smart cities in Northeast last year.

While the result of the ongoing EoL survey is likely to be announced before the month of June, Kohima continues striving to win the race. As reported earlier, the survey is aimed to quantify the ease of living, of citizens living in the cities across three pillars: Quality of Life, Economic ability, and Sustainability. In this edition of the EoL survey, 70% of the assessment criteria is based on this three pillars and 30% of the assessment will be based on the Citizen perception survey.