Over a thousand ‘likes' on the latest update, nearly 200 ‘shares' and a long thread of comments – Mayor Saidai S.Duraisamy's Facebook page is buzzing with activity.
In response to several requests from residents eager to meet him in person, the Mayor on Thursday said that those interested could confirm his availability with the staff at his CIT Nagar office and visit him.
Mr. Duraisamy has been on Facebook since 2010, interacting with IAS aspirants regularly, says M. Karthikeyan, director, Saidai Sa. Duraisamy's Manidha Naeyam IAS Academy, who helps maintain his account on the site.
“He has been in regular touch with the student community through this account but avoided political discussions on it. After being elected Mayor, we identified an opportunity to connect with younger residents through the network,” he says.
In addition to Mr. Duraisamy's individual account, two pages were created just before the local body polls, to promote him as the prospective Mayor.
The ‘Mayor' pages, which were created as a forum to campaign ahead of the local body polls, have now morphed into a highly interactive platform where the Mayor interacts with residents.
As on Thursday evening, Mr. Duraisamy had 4,753 friends in his individual account, in addition to the over 13,000 members of the ‘Chennai Mayor 2011' page, and the nearly-600 persons who ‘like' the ‘Saidai Sa Duraisamy Chennai Mayor' page.
Updated regularly
His pages get updated quite regularly, as is evident from the photographs of the recent swearing in ceremony, messages on immediate plan of action for flood mitigation or strategy for garbage disposal.
The pages are also being used to mobilise youth for various social causes. According to Mr. Karthikeyan, as many as 440 youngsters, mostly, students, signed up for a beach cleaning drive following a Facebook post announcing it.
“Similarly, we have put together a database of nearly 2,000 willing blood donors by networking on Facebook.”
From friends pledging their support for public health issues, or those giving suggestions for good local governance, the Mayor's page presents an interesting variety of responses and petitions from residents. Some friends such as Sankar Renganathan have posted with a sense of camaraderie, too. “Great !! but as usual, lets not wait for next monsoon to tackle the monsoon woes ,and let's start acting,” reads his message on the Mayor's wall.
Im a resident of Sindhu Street, Alwarthirunagar, ch -87. For the last 10 days corporation staff is not coming to our area to clean the rubbish in the street & collect the rubbish from home. So our street looks clumsy & bad smell is coming out of it , we can't even just pass through it. I've made a lot of complaints to corporation but nobody is take care of this. I hope that you will look into this issue & take proper action.
Chennai, now the expanded Chennai of 200 wards needs more water. It is said Chennai gets most of its water through NE monsoon. Inspite of plans to increase the storage capacity of existing reservoirs and creation of one more reservoir in the north/west of Chennai, will it not be advisable to clean, desilt all smaller lakes and temple tanks and store the surplus water from existing reservoirs just like Red Hills which is otherwise going into sea as waste? It may also be examined whether we can have one or two standby reservoirs in any convenient locations in non-catchment areas so as to fill up them by emptying existing reservoirs to the required levels to enable them to receive full NE monsoon. Further, Krishna and Veeranam water can also be received in full and stored in these new reservoirs without disturbing the existing storage capacity.
Dear Sir, I am very happy to see you as Mayor of Chennai. One small suggestion I want to give as a resident of CIT Nagar(First cross). Not only people residing near the canal of the CIT nagar experience hell life also people residing in and around the entire CIT nagar live an horrible life. Hence I kindly request you to take necessary steps to close the canal and use it for some other purpose.
Hi Sir, My office is located at DLF Manapakkam. At the least 50% of women working there travel by two wheeler.We find it very dangerous to take the u-turn while traveling from and to DLF. There is no signal or traffic police to divert traffic. It is not a personal concern, I raise this request on behalf of every employee working in DLF who has encountered an accident while coming to office or while leaving office. Each one definitely has a family to take care of. I met with an accident and am suffering the causes without being able to take care of my 8 month old baby.I wish there is not another mother suffering like me. Request you to consider this cause.
Sir, Will Chennai Mayor get into Mass encroachment drive in Chennai city on Main and sub main roads to get more space for roads and as well as widening of roads. Also won't it be better to give maintenance cum watchdog contractor every three KM to pvt maintenance with Govt monitoring or create separate Green force from college students with reasonable fund to look into all needs (garbage/street lights/road maintenance/cattle & dog menace/EB poles/encroachment monitoring/Electricity theft/footpath for walkers/digging work on roads /parking menace/advt banners/hoarding /gardening /rainwater harvesting/roadside eateries and many more issues left over ).
In turn the Pvt party (toll gate type) can collect revenue from permissible advt banners in small size to execute the same.
Why not in this mode instead of performing in the present mode which leads to everybody responsibility is nobody responsibilities . P.S. Venkat (Retd IAF) 9444630429 softsearch007@gmail.com
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