ONGOLE: The recent municipal council meeting of the Ongole Municipal Corporation (OMC) unanimously passed a resolution to take up drinking water supply to Balaji Nagar and other surrounding colonies of the 16th division of the OMC limits with `4.85 crore.
The resident of the Balaji Nagar and other localities have been facing serious drinking water scarcity for a long time. As a result, they requested the public servants, leaders as well as the municipal authorities to solve their water difficulties. Keeping this in mind, the civic body passed the resolution unanimously in an emergency council meeting held here at the OMC Executive Committee (EC) meeting hall on Tuesday.
Further, after a heated argument between the ruling YSRC and opposition Telugu Desam Party and Jana Sena Party corporators, the council also passed the resolution related to the continuation of the services of outsourcing sanitation workers in the OMC limits.
The civic body has conducted both the OMC general body and emergency council meetings on the same day and passed 17 out 18 resolutions unanimously, including the immediate shifting and closure of the much-discussed Bhagiradha Chemical & Industries Ltd factory situated in the CheruvukommuPalem village of OMC limits.
The villagers of Cheruvukommupalem, Vengamukkapalem, Yarajarla, and Pelluru have been filing their complaints to the government that the residues of the chemical factory have been causing severe groundwater and air pollution. Even a part of Ongole City is also affected by the factory pollutants. Earlier, the Ongole unit of AP Pollution Control Board (APPCB) also submitted a report that some of the pollutants emitted from the factory are hazardous to civic life and advised to close the unit.
Speaking on this, Mayor G Sujatha supported the resolution of factory closure and stated that the factory management has already started construction works of their new chemical factory unit in Raichur, Karnataka and that they might shift their business to that new factory.
Opposition TDP corporators strongly condemned the ruling party corporators, MLA and the Mayors versions on the Bhagiradha Chemicals factory closure and questioned that why ruling party leaders are in a hurry to pass a resolution against the factory as it is providing 600 jobs to the locals and running successfully for more than one and half?
“If problems are arising due to the plant management, we must give more time to clear the pollution issue,” Amburi Srinivasa Rao, TDP Corporator suggested. But the ruling party corporators and the Mayor ridiculed this and passed the resolution unanimously.