Industrialists have welcomed the Maharashtra Government’s decision to hire an international consultancy agency to sort out problems at the sprawling Rajiv Gandhi Infotech Park (RGIP) at Hinjewadi near here.
Beset with infrastructural lacunae, RGIP which bestow the status of an IT hub to Pune, this week saw the State Government initiating measures to meet long-standing demands of the stakeholder industrialists.
The move has been hailed by the Hinjewadi Industrialist Association (HIA), which has been highlighting a deteriorating road network that connects RGIP with the city. The road is used by hundreds of IT professionals to get to their workplace.
The IT hub, spread over 650 hectare of land, is credited with annual exports of over Rs 2,000 crore.
State Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan, accompanied by Industry Minister Narayan Rane, spent long hours earlier this week at Hinjewadi interacting with the HIA members before announcing that he would give the development of RGIP infrastructure top priority by engaging an international consultant.
According to available data, RGIP is visited by about 1 lakh people daily, including an estimated 70,000 IT professionals whose number is expected to swell further with the burgeoning business of an ever-expanding cluster of IT/ITeS companies.
The Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC), entrusted with the development work of the park, is now planning to spend Rs 70 crore on constructing two new roads and widening and repairing existing ones that connect the city with RGIP, official sources said.
HIA President Mritunjay Singh said the Chief Minister had issued a set of instructions to MIDC to work in a coordinated manner to solve the problems being faced by the industrial community.