Plan To Clean Up Cooum, Strengthen Banks

Chennai: Local Administration Minister M.K. Stalin said on Thursday that the Cooum would be cleaned and its banks strengthened like those of the Kandaleru–Poondi canal.

At the inauguration of a Chennai Corporation park near Valluvar Kottam here, Mr. Stalin said he had met Sri Sathya Sai Baba at Puttaparthi earlier this month to discuss the funding of the project. The Sathya Sai Trust had spent Rs. 200 crore on the Kandaleru–Poondi canal to prevent seepage and caving in of the banks. In January this year, when Sai Baba visited Chennai, Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi had requested assistance to clean up the Cooum.

The Sathya Sai Trust and the State Government would work out the technical and cost aspects, Mr. Stalin said. Mr. Stalin said the Chennai Corporation had constructed 65 km of stormwater drains at a cost of Rs. 37 crore as a monsoon preparedness measure. After the inauguration of the park, he inspected the recently renovated diagnostic laboratory in the same locality. The centre offers medical facilities, including X-ray and ultrasonogram, at affordable costs.

The other projects inaugurated by him were a drinking water treatment facility, sponsored by Lions Club at the Valluvar Kottam Corporation Boys Higher Secondary School (at a cost Rs. 2 lakh); a gymnasium on Model School Road (Rs. 7 lakh); high mast lamps at the junction of Whites Road–Westcott Road at Royapettah (Rs. 5.74 lakh) and streetlights on Eldams Road (Rs. 7.9 lakh). Mr. Stalin also laid the foundation stone for 32 Slum Board tenements on Mir Bakshi Ali Street and 60 tenements on Thomaiappan Street in Royapettah.

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