Tamil Nadu - Tirunelveli   

Shelved drinking water schemes to take off

— Photo: A. Shaikmohideen.

DIFFERENCE: DMK and AIADMK members arguing at the Tirunelveli Corporation council meeting on Monday.

TIRUNELVELI: The corporation council, which indefinitely shelved two mega drinking water schemes for the Melapalayam and Thatchanallur Zones recently in protest against sand mining in the areas where infiltration wells for these schemes were to be sunk, has finally decided to pursue the projects.

After permission was granted for mining sand at two points in the Tamiraparani at Suththamalli near here, where the corporation was actually planning to sink the infiltration wells for two drinking water schemes, worth Rs.20 crore, the corporation council, as a sign of registering its protest, decided to put on hold these projects, citing the reason that the rampantly removal sand bed would badly hit the natural filtration of drinking water.

Following an appeal from Mayor A.L. Subramanian, Collector G. Prakash banned sand mining activities around the existing infiltration wells at Suththamalli and announced that no sand quarrying would be allowed in this area in future also considering the corporation’s drinking new water projects.

Buoyed by this announcement, the corporation has decided to pursue the projects – one on an outlay of Rs. 3.97 crore for wards 8 to 10 of Thatchanallur Zone and the second scheme at the cost of Rs. 15.95 crore for wards 19, 26 and 27.

When the Mayor informed the councillors in the meeting held on Monday that work on the projects would take off as planned since sand mining had been banned in Suththamalli area, the members welcomed the decision.

As per part of these projects, overhead tanks will be constructed at Suththamalli, Teachers Colony, Thamizh Nagar, Ezhil Nagar, Kumaresan Nagar, Thirumaal Nagar, Canara Bank Colony and Perumalpuram.

When the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam member Sudha K. Paramasivan attracted the Mayor’s attention on the alleged death threat issued to Mr. Subramanian in connection with the sand mining at Suththamalli, the Mayor said: “The issue is over as sand mining at that point has already been stopped. Please don’t give political colour to this episode”.

He also informed the members that the council would unanimously pass a resolution cancelling an earlier decree adopted during the British period, which condemned the freedom struggle led by V.O. Chidambaram and Subramania Siva in 1908.

One of the resolutions adopted in today’s meeting endorsed the purchasing of mobile phones for the chairmen of four zones of the corporation, each at the cost of Rs.12,975, though an earlier resolution adopted on January 31, 2007, had approved the purchase of mobile phones, each at the cost of only Rs. 6,000.

Moreover, the ‘beneficiaries’ can speak up to Rs.1,200 every month in the ‘official’ mobile phone.

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