World Tamil meet: now it is race against time

A meeting of the City Development Committee here on Wednesday stressed close co-ordination among various Government agencies and speed in completing infrastructure development works for the World Classical Tamil Conference to be held here from June 23 to 27.

Chairman of the committee and Mayor of Coimbatore R. Venkatachalam pointed out to the officials from the Coimbatore Corporation, National and State Highways, Tamil Nadu Electricity Board, Tamil Nadu Water Supply and Drainage Board and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) that it would now be a race against time to complete a number of infrastructure works.

All these agencies gave a status report on their works at the meeting.

Funds sanctioned

District Collector P. Umanath said that when the committee met two weeks ago, some schemes had just taken off then and Government Orders were awaited for many others.

“But, the orders have come now and funds also sanctioned. It is now our task to speed up the works and complete them soon. We cannot afford to fix June 22 as a tentative deadline as the conference begins on June 23. The works must be over by the end of May,” he said.

The Collector called upon Corporation officials to co-ordinate with the city police on the latter action plan on traffic management during the conference.

“The Corporation must check whether it had missed any link road that is in the police's action plan,” he said. Corporation Commissioner Anshul Mishra asked the BSNL and the electricity board officials to exchange diagrams of their underground lines so that no damages were caused.

Overhead lines

The Commissioner was responding to complaints from BSNL officials that the work by the electricity board to shift its overhead lines underground had caused damaged to their telephone and internet cables.

Mr. Mishra said these problems should not affect the pace of work or the services provided by both the agencies.

He asked the officials on both sides to stay back after the committee meeting and sort out the problems.

The Collector asked the Corporation to ensure a smooth process of re-filling water tanks along the route of a conference-related procession.

“When thousands of people line up along the route, it may not be easy for lorries to reach the tanks. So, have a smooth system in place,” he said.

Transit points

There was a plan to have transit points at the city's border so that all the vehicles of people who wanted to attend the meet need not come into the city.

Mass transport such as buses could be arran`ged for them. In that case, adequate number of mobile toilets should be positioned at these points also, in addition to those along the procession route, the Collector said.

Special Officer for the conference S. Prabhakaran called for a separate action plan for placing garbage bins along the procession route and at other places where the conference-related activities would take place.

Adequate bins

Adequate number of bins must be available at CODISSIA Trade Fair Complex, the venue of the conference, he said.

The Corporation would lay pipelines from V.O.C. Park to the trade fair complex road in order to ensure adequate bore well and drinking water supply on the procession route.

The cost of the project, for a nearly 10 km line, was estimated at Rs.39 lakh, the Corporation said.