Mangalore, October 27: The Council of the Mangalore City Corporation has decided to hand over the maintenance of water supply to Adyar, Padu, Thumbe Gram pancahayts to Zilla Panchayat at the earliest.
The supply of water to these villages without any income is incurring additional burden of Rs 84 lakh to the City Corporation.
The agenda said that with the implementation of KUIDFC water supplying pipelines, the residents of Pudu, Kallige, Thumbe and Farangipete are getting water from Thumbe free of cost. However, it has been maintained by the Mangalore City Corporation. About 2.25 MGD water is supplied to these villages since 2007. With the maintenance of water supply system, the MCC is spending Rs 7 lakh monthly towards electricity bill, payment of wages to the employees and pumpset maintenance.
MCC Commissioner Dr Harish said that potholes on all the motorable roads in 60 wards will be filled within a week. The estimate for filling the potholes has been put at Rs 2.5 crore. When corporator Shashidhar Hegde and Naveen D'Souza said that there is a need to convene a meeting of road contractors to discuss their problems with regard to asphaltation of roads, Mayor Praveen said that the meeting will be convened within three days.
Shankar Bhat said that one organisation was distributing photostat copy of application form for Ashraya scheme, for Rs 500 recently. Whether any organisation has the right to distribute application forms for money?
The Commissioner said that the MCC has identified land for the landless. However, few persons had approached the court stating that the identified land is their kumki land. Under Vasathi yojana, the MCC is planning to construct flats. If any organisations come forward to bear the expenses on social responsibility, the MCC can construct few houses to the poor.
Corporator James D'Souza raised the issue of streetlights in the MCC limits and said that majority of the streetlights do not burn inspite of complaints. The Commissioner said that all contractors meeting was convened recently.
The MCC has decided to pay monthly maintenance amount to the contractors only after the Corporator gives verification certificate. The new tender will be invited for maintaining streetlights at the earliest as the tender document is ready for the same, he added.
The State has directed all the urban local bodies (MCC, CMC, TMCs) to revise the water tariff in its letter dated September 28, 2011. However, the MCC has resolved not to hike the tariff as the government failed to take the Council to consideration while taking a decision.
“At the same time, we have enough water source near the City, unlike other Corporation, where the cost incurred for supplying water is more,” said Chief Whip Sudheer Shetty.
The Council also made automatic reading metre mandatory for commercial flats, non domestic and high rise buildings, commercial (hotels) in the City Corporation limits.
Accordingly, the MCC will invite tender for the purchase of AMR and initiate measure to install the water connections. The money for the same will be collected from the users through water bill. The users will be given 10 installments to pay the money for the metres.
Welcoming the move Dr Arathi Krishna told coastaldigst.com that Indians stranded in any foreign country can utilize this facility. "Initially, I was approached by Mr Zakaria and Mr Sheik who wanted chartered flights to help their employees fly back to India. I asked them to write to the Indian Ambassador in Saudi Araia Mr Ausaf Sayeed. Then I requested the ambassador to forward the request to Joint Secretary Dr Nagendra Prasad, who is in charge of gulf division in the Ministry of External Affairs, and then to Secretary on charge of Gulf and then I requested Secretary of Economic Relations Mr T S Tirumurti who was also in charge of Gulf to follow this up," she said.
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