More than 1,500 Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam members from the Coimbatore Urban North and South districts staged a protest near the South Taluk Office on Friday condemning poor administration of the Coimbatore Corporation.
Led by the Coimbatore North Urban district secretary in-charge S. Muthusamy and South Urban district secretary R. Nachimuthu, the DMK men accused the Corporation of mismanaging water supply, street light management and other aspects of civic governance.
Mr. Muthusamy said that water supply was poor across the city. After dusk, road users in most places were forced to drive in the dark because the civic body did not pay enough attention to street light maintenance.
In the added areas, the Corporation had done very little to improve the infrastructure in the last five years. As a result, though the areas had been under the Corporation for the last five years, the people there continued to live with the infrastructure that matched municipal, town panchayat or village panchayat status.
At the main office, residents found it difficult to get building plan approval in a fair and transparent manner. Corruption was rampant in the civic body.
He also said that the State Government gave wrong information about development projects in Coimbatore to the Tamil Nadu Assembly. The Ukkadam flyover project was yet to take off but AIADMK Ministers had claimed in the Assembly that the project was underway.
Another issue in the city was that over bridges across railway crossings progressed at a very slow pace, forcing N. Karthik, MLA, (DMK) to take up the issue in the Assembly.
The State Government was not keen on developing a western bypass for the city, which if a reality today, would have reduced traffic congestion to a great extent.
Former Minister Pongalur N. Palanisamy, DMK leader Mu. Ramanathan led the protest.
