Times News Network
Mangalore, Aug 14: The City Corporation’s first experiment with walkie-talkies is a failure.
The corporation has told the provider to pack off after the company failed to provide cent percent coverage in 60 wards of the corporation. The corporation will re-tender the process.
The corporation provided walkie-talkies to 70 city corporation personnel so that they could be at the beck and call of the authorities with a push of a button. With this technology, the personnel could have been accessible anywhere, anytime, in case of an emergency.
The corporation had acquired 70 walkie-talkies at a cost of Rs 11 lac and they were functional from March. The commissioner, executive engineer, all assistant executive engineers, junior engineers in the engineering department, revenue, health and sanitary section officials were carrying the 280-gram bulky black equipment with them. Apart from officials, the mayor, deputy mayor and chairmen of four standing committees of the corporation had also been supplied with this communication equipment to ensure smooth functioning of the administrative machinery.
Corporation executive engineer B K Suresh Babu, who also had one with him, said the first and foremost condition of the corporation was cent percent coverage — which the company failed to provide.
Babu said that the company had asked for 80 per cent of the payment before the completion of the work, which the corporation did not do as per the rules. However, the corporation came with a proposal to give half the amount against a bank guarantee from the company. “They refused and we told them to pack off,’’ he added.
Regarding cost escalation, Babu admitted the next tender will be slightly higher as when the corporation had first called the tenders, the current provider quoted the lowest at Rs 11 lac, the next was higher by Rs 5.5 lac, he noted.
The idea of giving walkie-talkies was mooted 18 months back and the state government had given the nod. The proposal went into cold storage for some time, as there was a problem in allocating the frequency by the Centre. Though there were four bidders for the open tender, Icom bagged the rights to provide the communication facility.
Babu said almost all areas of the corporation were covered, but there were ‘blind spots’ in Suratkal, Valencia and Bajal areas due to the undulating terrain. The company was in the process of installing more repeater stations so that these black holes or blind spots were minimized. But that did not happen.
But not all corporation personnel were happy with the handheld devices, as they were too bulky compared to the sleek mobiles. Another negative point as perceived by the personnel was that the communication was not person-specific. The message was received by all users, unlike mobiles, hence the chances of lack of response was high.
Walkie-talkies are portable, bidirectional radio transceiver, first developed for military use. Major characteristics include a half-duplex (only one can receive and transmit at a time) channel and a push-to-talk switch that starts transmission.
The typical physical format looks somewhat like a cordless telephone handset, with an antenna and its built-in speaker can be heard by the user as well as those in his immediate vicinity.
“This makes all the users to be attentive whenever the set crackles and makes one lose concentration,’’ Babu adds.
Moreover, with so many messages being sent across, the set is always alive, which makes it hard for everyone to be attentive all the time, he added.
Earlier News: