The Hindu : Kerala / Thiruvananthapuram News : No plan to privatise KWA, says Minister

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Thursday, Nov 22, 2007
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Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram

No plan to privatise KWA, says Minister

Staff Reporter

It will not be in public interest, says N.K. Premachandran

Consumer Employee Friendship initiative launched
Programme for intra-office discussions on issues affecting KWA

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The government is committed to retaining the Kerala Water Authority in the public sector and has no plans to privatise the agency, Minister for Water Resources N.K. Premachandran has said.

He was speaking after inaugurating the Consumer Employee Friendship (CEF) initiative launched by the Kerala Water Authority Employees’ Union (CITU) here on Wednesday.

Under this programme, the union will initiate intra-office discussions on issues affecting KWA customers and seek to find ways to set right those problems in a speedy manner. After a trial period at the KWA headquarters, the initiative will be implemented in other KWA offices in the State.

“It has been proved time and again that agencies in the public sector have more social commitment than those in the private sector. There are those who argue that public sector agencies should withdraw from the service sector. Such a move will not be in public interest,” Mr. Premachandran said.

New awareness

He said initiatives such as the CEF would help a public agency like the KWA acquire a new awareness about the role it had to play in society and about the commitment with which it would have to respond to the needs of the people. It was because the KWA showed that kind of awareness that it got appointed as the supervising agency for such schemes as the JNNURM. Otherwise that role would have, long before, been given to a private agency, he pointed out.

In his presidential address, V. Sivankutty, MLA, said not a single day passed without some one or the other cursing the water supply division or the sewerage division. There were those in the KWA who responded sympathetically to the woes of the people and did all that they could to address those problems. There were also those employees who reacted to such problems with arrogance and indifference. “As a people’s representative I will stand by any programme that is designed to solve people’s problems,” he added.

Acting Managing Director of the KWA Suresh Babu and Accounts Member Girijavallabhan were among the top KWA officials present.

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