THIRUVANANTHAPURAM : Around 30 per cent of the development plan fund of the city Corporation will be for the agriculture working group projects. This was announced at the development seminar on plan formulation for 2019-20 held at St Mary’s Higher Secondary School, Pattom, on Sunday. The BJP councillors tried to disrupt the function in protest over the Sabarimala issue when Tourism Minister Kadakampally Surendran was called for inaugurating the Corporation’s third-year plan formulation for 2019-20.
Along with BJP councillors, the UDF councillors also did not participate in the seminar stating their protest against the minister’s participation in the seminar. “The seminar being held here is for the development of the Corporation’s ward. Hence the presence of all the councillors in the seminar was important, and staying out of it due to other issues was irrelevant,” said the minister. Mayor V K Prasanth who presided over the function while criticising the BJP said they have been challenging the public by sabotaging the development works through creating unnecessary controversies.
To address the previous year project’s issue the local body has drafted the action plan of the new 120 projects in this year’s plan. In 2018-19, the state government sanctioned an amount of C328.28 crore. Along with this, an additional amount of C500 crore has been issued for smart city projects and C200 crore has been allotted for PMAY, NULM and AMRUT projects.
The Corporation is planning to integrate a few projects under the local bodies’ four main heads - agriculture, water, Suchitwa and waste management. The 2019-20 plan fund’s 20 per cent is for LIFE mission, 15 per cent will be allotted for waste management projects, said Raveendran Nair, vicechairman of Planning Board. The local body has 19 active working group under it. This year the corporation has added a new working group- disaster management giving emphasis on rebuilding Kerala.