The Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) will soon start a call centre at Sabarimala as part of providing better facilities to pilgrims coming from outside Kerala, Devaswom Commissioner P. Venugopal has said.
Mr. Venugopal said here on Wednesday that devotees could get information regarding Sabarimala and the pilgrimage through the call centre.
The centre would provide the latest information on the crowd situation, offerings to the presiding deity, accommodation, and train timings. People would get information in their own mother tongue, and preliminary steps had been initiated for launching it at the earliest.
ADVERTISEMENT
The commissioner said the TDB would install response boxes at the Sannidhanam to know the responses of the pilgrims. He said the Aravana stock had crossed 25 lakh cans (250 ml each), besides 3.5 lakh Appam as on Wednesday. The TDB had tried its best to make the administration corruption-free by computerising the offices at Pampa and Sabarimala, he said.
According to Mr. Venugopal, scientifically designed vehicle parking lots at the base camp at Nilackal would be of great help in easing congestion there during the peak days of the pilgrim season.
ADVERTISEMENT
He said water scarcity would be a thing of the past once the storage tank under construction near Urakkuzhy was completed.
The board was exploring the possibility of reaching water from Koruthode to Sabarimala, besides augmenting the capacity of the Kunnar dam in a phased manner, he said.
Mr. Venugopal said almost 80 per cent of the problems arising out of lack of proper waste disposal system would be solved by 2015 when the proposed modern sewage treatment plant with a capacity to treat five million litres of waste a day was completed.
He said as many as 27 e-urinal units would be installed at different points along the Marakkoottom-Sannidhanam Chandranandan Road.
Sabarimala has been declared a plastic-free zone and hence devotees should take extra care to avoid plastic covers for carrying items in the Irumudikkettu, he said.
Oxygen parlours
Oxygen parlour-cum-first aid centres have started functioning at Saramkuthi-top, Saramkuthi-bottom, and at Sabaripeedhom. Specially trained volunteers of the Akhila Bharatha Ayyappa Seva Sanghom have been posted to run these oxygen parlours.