Top priority to improve sanitation in pilgrim city, says Abhinay Reddy

Tirupati: The Municipal Corporation’s top priority is to improve required facilities including manpower and equipment to ensure proper sanitary condition in Tirupati for the sake of hundreds of thousands of pilgrims visiting daily for darshan of Lord Venkateswara and also local residents, said Deputy Mayor Bhumana Abhinay Reddy.

Stating that there is an urgent need for increasing sanitation staff and officials to provide dedicated sanitation services which include keeping all the roads clean and tidy, maintenance of drains and strengthening health staff to check adulterated food which is rampant in the city taking advantage of huge number of floating population including students coming for education and also others for various purposes to the city.

Reddy on Tuesday held a meeting with city-based mediapersons to disclose his priorities for the all-round development of the city.

He said after successfully achieving the master plan roads completion improving road facility and solving the traffic problem, the corporation is now focusing on sanitation.

The first and foremost requirement for the municipal corporation was to increase the sanitation staff from the existing 1,100 to 2,000 to cope with the manifold increase of workload, he said, adding that the workers are doing many works like road and drain maintenance, clearing and transporting garbages and many other works due to shortage of men.

The increase in staff strength to 2,000 will help the municipal health department to provide dedicated sanitation services in the pilgrim areas and also strengthen the wing to check up hotels, eateries etc to prevent adulterated food inimical to health of pilgrims and locals.

Reddy explaining the future initiatives said the corporation has drawn a plan for setting up IT Park at Settipalli in the city. The corporation has got 110 acres land under land pooling after the settlement of long pending land issue, Reddy said informing that many IT companies expressed their interest to set up their units in the proposed IT Park.

The facilities like road, rail, air link and availability of workforce i.e IT professors in Rayalaseema had been luring many IT companies, he explained.

Many journalists pointed out that large quantity of rainwater which was flowing down from Tirumala hills was going waste into the drains and urged Reddy to explore the possibility of impounding the rainwater particularly from the two waterfalls. Abhinay assured to look into the storage of rainwater for city needs.

Press Club president Bhaskar Reddy, Mukesh, Prasad, Murali, Raju, Hari, Rajendra, Narendra, Ramachandra Reddy, Jaypal, Dwaraka, Narayana Reddy and other senior journalists participated.