Kochi, Monday, June 01, 2009: Making matters more clear on the company’s stand on the 15 bllion Smartcity project, Tecom CEO Farid Abdul Rahman said, the company hopes of making the dream project ‘Smartcity’ to reality and it needs the assurance from the government regarding the free hold right on the 12 percent of land meant for the project.

Flaying reports that the company is affected with global meltdown Farid Abdul Rahman said, the company had made repeated requests to government regarding the land issue and is ready to wait until December, before which the company expects the government to reach a consensus on the same.

He also added that, it needs written assurance from government and only after receiving positive response from government the company would move further with construction activities.

Tecom, of late, had demanded freehold rights on 12pecent of the project land, which works out to 39 acres,. But Kerala government maintains that the freehold facility clause will come into operation only after the finalisation of the SmartCity master plan.

The proposed project, to be jointly launched by the state government and infrastructure major Smart City, is slated to come up on a 246-acre plot with 8.8 million square feet of built-up space, of which 70 percent is earmarked for IT and IT-enabled services.
The foundation stone of the project was laid Nov 16, 2007 by Achuthanandan and since then, barring a few board meetings, there has been no movement in the project.

Earlier Smart City Dubai chief executive Fareed Abdulrahman had said the company wanted the land holding issue settled first.

He added that the company had put on hold recruitment of additional human resources until the freehold issue was resolved.