Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore   

Communist parties begin campaign against Corporation

— Photo: M. Periasamy

POINTING OUT FLAWS: Members of Communist Party of India (Marxist) and Communist Party of India on a campaign against the Coimbatore Corporation in the city on Sunday.

COIMBATORE: The Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Communist Party of India launched here on Sunday a five-day campaign against the Coimbatore Corporation. The parties said the purpose of the campaign was to explain to the people the flaws in the functioning of the civic body, especially on the alleged lack of transparency in implementing infrastructures schemes.

District secretaries P.R. Natarajan (CPI-M), R.A. Govindarajan (CPI), leaders of the parties in the Corporation Council C. Padmanabhan (CPI-M) and K. Purushothaman (CPI) led the campaigns from four different points in the city. The first four days would see party members covering all the 72 wards of the Corporation in vans.

Four core teams in different areas would address the public from the vans.

The parties would stage a demonstration on the fifth day.

Handbills issued by the parties to the public during the campaign said the Corporation had begun implementing the Rs.96-crore Integrated Solid Waste Management Scheme.

It had begun procuring vehicles and equipment for this. Even the cost of waste disposal was set to go up from Rs.4 crore to Rs.20 crore a year. But, the Corporation was yet to appoint enough staff for collecting segregated waste. The advice of the Communist parties to appoint enough workers was being ignored.

The parties insisted on inviting fresh bids for a project to establish two sewage treatment plants under the Rs.377-crore underground drainage scheme. It cited irregularities in the awarding of contracts as the reason for this demand. The parties criticised the Government had fixed sewerage usage charges, to be collected from the public, at Rs.170 a month even before the scheme had taken off.

The campaign made a strong demand for increasing the outlay for houses for the urban poor. The parties said that each house was to be built at Rs.1.12 lakh under the Basic Services for Urban Poor component of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission. The houses would be built with grants from the Central and State Governments.

The outlay should be increased in order to meet the rise in cost of construction materials.

Speedy implementation of the Pilloor Phase II drinking water scheme, withdrawing moves to privatise any Corporation service to the people and a rollback in the increase in drinking water charges were some of the other demands.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Job enablers to enhance placements
AUT opposes government move
Training in fruit and vegetable preservation
Take over private power plants, plead TNEB engineers
Hostel accommodation
Valparai Kodai Vizha from May 24
Pig iron price yet to come down, laments SIEMA
Communist parties begin campaign against Corporation
In support of children affected by HIV/AIDS
Held for murder
Boosting self-confidence among young students
In Coimbatore Today

Copyright © 2008, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu