CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu government has planned to build houses for all members of the Film Employees Federation of South India (FEFSI), said Chief Minister M Karunanidhi. He made this announcement at the event held to felicitate him with the title of Ulaga Kalai Padaippaali by the FEFSI as part of the Ninth All India Film Employees Conference here on Friday.
Comparing this plan to build homes for film federation employees to that existing in Andhra Pradesh, the Chief Minister said the government will soon begin construction work at the places chosen by the FEFSI members themselves, led by the FEFSI president VC Guhanathan. The federation, which includes members of the 24 crafts of filmmaking, has over 30,000 members.
Referring to the land that was allocated for FEFSI employees during AIADMK general secretary J Jayalalithaa’s previous regime, the chief minister said he could not give any details about when that would reach the people.”I do not wish to speak about it,” he said.
“The place that will have homes for the employees will be called Oviyapuri, along the lines of Hyderabad’s Chithrapuri,” he said, adding that the date was not too far before this project will have been completed. “In some time from now, there will be election again, and we will keep this promise of ours and meet the entire film fraternity once again, at a grand event, for the opening ceremony of the project,” said the Chief Minister.
A welfare board for the film and television fraternity will be constituted soon, he assured.
Referring to his recent speeches in which he predicted that the Dravida movement would soon flourish as a national movement, the Chief Minister noted that this event could be the first step towards it, as it had representatives of filmdom from many states.
The event was attended by the who’s who of the film industry, including actors Rajinikanth, Kamal Haasan, Vijay, Vikram, Vishal and Trisha, apart from directors K Balachandar, Bharathiraja, Ameer, P Vasu and Vikraman. Representatives from the film federations of many states, including Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Assam and West Bengal, were at the event in which Bollywood was represented by actor Rajesh Khanna, apart from Subhash Ghai and Mahesh Bhatt.
The Ninth All India Film Employees Conference, which began today, will be on till October 11. The award they presented to the Chief Minister contained a large crystal figure, with the names of all of the chief minister’s movies engraved on it, along with a gold pen at its apex.