Singapore’s Surbana Jurong (SJ) has started working on the urban development plan of Trincomalee on a request made by the government. A four-member team of Surbana visited Trincomalee last week to prepare an initial planning report.
The four-member team studied the geographical locations and religious, cultural and economically important places. They also inspected the water supply systems in the city including the present water supply system connected through the Kantale Wewa.
They also visited some of the tourism projects along the Eastern coastal line and travelled to Pulmoddai to inspect the ecological sites.
“The team will be back in Sri Lanka with their initial report next month for another round of findings,” Chairman of Western Region Megapolis Plan Project (WRMPP), Ajita de Costa said.
de Costa, who is also the Coordinating Officer of the Trincomalee Development project, said the final project plan will be submitted by January next year. Sri Lanka earlier hired Surbana to help design a plan to turn Colombo’s metropolitan region into a modern ‘megapolis’.
Meanwhile, the government has also asked the Manila-based Asian Development Bank (ADB) to formulate a project to improve the basic facilities of Trincomalee city.
In this connection, a team of Bank officials had talks with the officials of the Ministry of Megapolis in May and they confirmed they would continue discussions on this project aimed at improving basic facilities in the Trincomalee city and the Port area.
The ADB has lent around USD 2-2.5 billion for urbanization related development activities in Sri Lanka within the past three years and plans to increase it to USD 4 billion by 2020.
Headquartered in Singapore and wholly owned by Temasek Holdings, SJ was formed in June 2015 through the merger of renowned urban planning and affordable housing design experts, Surbana International Consultants and Jurong International, Singapore’s premiere industrial and infrastructure engineering design stalwart.
Surbana Jurong Private Limited (SJ) has a rich 50-year heritage in the development of Singapore’s urban, industrial and infrastructure landscape.
SJ traces its roots to the Housing Development Board (HDB) and the Jurong Town Corporation (JTC), agencies synonymous with Singapore’s early township and industrialisation efforts.