Chief Minister N Rangasamy has responded positively to the invitation extended by Chief Minister of Malacca, a state in Malaysia, Datuk Seri Mohd Ali Rustam, requesting him to visit Malacca for exploring possibilities of mutual cooperation, through the twin city agreement between the two cities.
Malacca CM’s representative Manikandamurthy Velayoudam has come down from Malaysia with an invitation from Chief Minister of Malacca to Puducherry Chief Minister and tourism minister, P Rajavelu, to explore Malaysia and build relationship in various areas ranging from tourism to cultural & economic development between both the states.
Subsequent to recent visit to Malacca by the tourism minister of Puducherry, the Malacca government is of the view that both the Puducherry and Malacca shared common values in various areas. Malacca was a Portuguese colony in the past and has a lot of UN heritage buildings.
They have successfully maintained those buildings with monument value, river tourism and transformed the city of Malacca into a successful tourism destination with more than one million tourist arrivals in a year. During his meeting with Chief Minister of Malacca, Puducherry tourism minister had expressed deep interest to take clue from the success of Malacca, and to transform Pucherrry into a transit tourist destination. It is following this meeting that Chief Minister of Malacca has extended this invitation to Puducherry CM to come to work together in a broad spectrum such as tourism development cooperation and renewable energy.
Malacca has succeeded in generating energy from garbage, which could be of great use to Puducherry, which is currently facing difficulties in management of solid waste. Besides, the twin city agreement would also open up possible investments in Puducherry, thus putting in place the tourism infrastructure. Secretary Tourism W V R Murthy said beach tourism, water sports, oceanarium and MICE tourism were the priority areas.
Already this kind of a twin city agreement has been executed between Malacca and Chennai in 2010.