Udupi: Bad roads dominate CMC meet

By Snehalatha, Udupi
Bellevision Media Network

Udupi, 31 August 2011: After a long time, on Tuesday a meaningful monthly meeting was held by the Udupi City Municipal Corporation Council. Normally, the meetings were marred by rude exchanges, personal attacks, insinuations etc. For a change this time the proceedings were healthy; may be because of the presence of two legislators!

 

Mr.  M. R. Pai Senior member took serious objections to the fact that the private party assigned to collect parking fees from the vehicle owners were looting the drivers especially during the festival of Krishnastami. Taking advantage of the situation the collectors instead of charging Rs. 5/- per hour as stipulated by the Corporation, collected double the amount without authorisation. Mr. Pai said even he was not spared. He showed the members a parking ticket costing Rs. 10 which he paid to park his car. The members were unanimous in condemning this kind of day light robbery. Mr. Raghupathi Bhat requested that the receipt which was placed before the house is taken as proof as well as a complaint and action should be initiated against the concerned person. The Chairman promised to take stringent action against him and even ready to sack him from his post.

 

Opposition leader Jayananda brought to the notice of the members the mushrooming multi-story buildings in the city and their impact on the internal drainage system of the city. Legislator Mr Raghupathi Bhat pointed out that the drainage work would be carried out in stages. The first stage covers Manipal and Santhekatte areas and a sum of Rs. 34 crores have been estimated to complete this work. He was confident that the present chief minister being a local man there should not be a problem in releasing the funds.

 

 

Poor condition of the road at Parkala was the concern raised by the local member Ms Sumithra Nayak to which the legislator said that after the rainy season at a cost of 64 Lakhs surface work of the road would be taken up and completed in November. He also suggested that action should be taken against the contractor who did the surface work of the Geetanjali road a year ago which is now in poor condition because of the poor quality of the work.

 

In reply to a question, Mr Gokuldas Nayak said that for the first time in the country under the Prime Minister’s Health coverage scheme for the under privileged through the municipal council a sum of Rs. 31 lakhs was disbursed to the Insurance company as premium. Under this scheme the beneficiaries have benefited to the tune of Rs. 30 lakhs.

 

Council president Mr Kiran Kumar said that poor sick people who could not visit a hospital earlier are now even for a cold and fever visit the hospital because of this scheme. He urged the members to educate the people about the benefits of this scheme.

 

MLC Kota Shrinivas Poojary, Vice President Bharathi Chandrashekar, standing committee president Naveen Bhandary were also present at the meeting.