The Hindu : Front Page : Corporation special squads to tackle touts

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Sunday, Mar 16, 2008
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Corporation special squads to tackle touts

K.V. Prasad

COIMBATORE: The Coimbatore Corporation seems set to flush out touts from the premises of all its offices through a special initiative aimed at salvaging the image of the civic body.

Free run

The Corporation is planning to deploy special squads in each of the four zonal offices as touts are said to be having a free run there.

The zonal offices are mini-corporations in themselves with 18 wards coming under each. Officials admit that touts also prowl the Town Hall main office. But they have greater freedom and opportunities at the zonal offices because major services such as property tax assessment, building plan approval and release of drinking water connections have been decentralised.

Decentralisation

While decentralisation is aimed at making access to these services easier for the public, this has proved advantageous to the touts who seek to use the shortage of staff and procedural delays to earn huge sums by extending their unauthorised services.

A senior official says the squads will not be a permanent feature. These will function for a certain period to flush out the touts. A clean system will be established in the process and thereafter sustained without the help of the squads.

Permanent feature

The aim is to have 10 members in each squad that will watch the movements of visitors to the offices. A councillor says most of these visitors are either known to the staff, councillors or contractors taking up various works of the Corporation. In all the Corporation offices, one can find these “known visitors” even after office hours.

Intermediaries

Pointing out that this is a problem that had taken root decades ago, the official says the Makkalai Thedi special camps had revealed that people can avail themselves of the Corporation’s services without intermediaries.

Officials in various wings of the civic body admit that the civic body cannot carry out a storming operation to end the problem swiftly as people at various levels are involved.

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