Each of the 100 councillors of Madurai Corporation would be given Rs. 5 lakh towards taking up maintenance works of civic facilities in their wards. The Mayor, V.V. Rajan Chellappa, announced this at the Corporation council meeting held here on Friday.
The long-pending demand of the councillors was met after the Mayor discussed the modalities of usage of annual funds for the councillors with the Corporation Commissioner, R. Nanthagopal. The councillors have been complaining of delay in taking up various works ranging from repairing borewell pumps, potholes on roads, streetlights and toilets.
Often the elected representatives invited the wrath of the public due to delay in sanction of work order and clearance of fund for such works. Though the council had passed a resolution for allocation of Rs. 5 lakh to each of the councillors long back, the scheme could not be implemented without formulating the modalities.
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The Mayor said that the funds could be used for providing new water connections, laying cement roads, taking up patch works on roads, installing rain water harvesting structures and maintenance of Corporation buildings, sewerage and public toilets.
During the discussion, the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam standing committee leader, S.T. Jeyabalan, said that the funds should be released and works taken up immediately on the councillors getting sanctions for the works in their wards from the Mayor or the Commissioner. “Engineers should be given suitable instruction on this aspect,” he said to which the Mayor agreed.
However, the zonal Chairpersons, P. Salaimuthu, vehemently opposed to the move claiming that all the works should be cleared only through at the zonal level. The council witnessed chaos for a while as many ruling party councillors objected to Mr. Salaimuthu’s suggestion.
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Earlier, the Mayor, distributed new mobile phone handsets along with a closed user group connectivity to the councillors.