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Public Health / Sanitation

Check-ups find 3,500 students partially blind

Thursday, 13 January 2011 06:36 administrator
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Deccan Chronicle        13.01.2011

Check-ups find 3,500 students partially blind

January 13th, 2011

Jan. 12: The Chennai corporation conducted eye check-ups for over 61,000 students from 188 corporation schools in the last one-year and found that more than 3,500 students suffered from partial blindness.

As per the instructions of the Palli Sirar Kannoli Kaapom scheme, all the affected students would be provided with spectacles and provided treatment to regain clear vision.

Speaking at the inauguration of a corporation eye clinic in Egmore on Wednesday, Mayor M. Subramaniam said that in the last four years, the civic body had opened 50 hospitals and 3 lakh persons benefited from 136 medical camps that were conducted in the city.

With the objective that schoolchildren should not lag in studies due to blurred vision, the civic body has conducted eye check ups for over 7.5 lakh from various government schools. “In the past few years 31,000 students have benefited from the ‘Palli Sirar Kannoli Kaapom’ scheme. We have distributed spectacles to students of a Chennai government higher secondary school in Rotler Street,” the mayor said.

 

Bins distributed for source segregation

Tuesday, 11 January 2011 05:16 administrator
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The Hindu          11.01.2011

Bins distributed for source segregation

Staff Reporter

The Chennai Corporation plans to extend the collection of recyclable plastic waste to 12 more wards in the city. The project is being implemented in three wards each in six zones covered by the civic body for conservancy operation. The civic body has purchased nearly 100 metric tonnes of such plastic waste from residents of 18 wards in the past eight months. Officials of the Corporation said that conservancy workers who collected the waste from residents for Rs.2 per kg, sold it to wholesalers. To create awareness of source segregation, Mayor M.Subramanian on Monday distributed bins to residents of Tamil Nadu Slum Clearance Board tenement at Satyamurthy Nagar, Teynampet.

The Mayor also distributed welfare assistance to three persons under the Moovalur Ramamirtham Ammaiyar marriage assistance scheme on the occasion.

 

 

CRZ reminder as restoration loses flow along Cooum

Monday, 10 January 2011 11:16 administrator
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The Times of India       10.01.2011

CRZ reminder as restoration loses flow along Cooum

K Praveen Kumar, TNN, Jan 10, 2011, 04.30am IST
CHENNAI: For a brief period in November 2005, Chennaiites could pass by the Cooum river without any discomfort. The unbearable stench that usually emanated from the river had somehow evaporated and the flowing waters looked crystal clear. Egrets and cormorants flocked the Cooum to feast on fish. However, this was not due to any efforts by the Corporation, but the result of a random act of nature. Three days of torrential rains had flushed out the waste and cleaned up the river. Can the latest Coastal Regulatory Zone Notification, 2010, similarly restore fresh waters to the Cooum?

Even if the state government makes a sincere effort to implement the CRZ notification, whereby it has to initiate schemes to phase out effluents and sewage discharge into the river within two years of the notification's release, the deadline imposed seems highly ambitious. In December 2009, the state government had formed the Chennai River Authority to clean up the 72-km stretch of Cooum River within 10 years. Very little progress has been made so far, making the two-year target seem a remote possibility.

"All the stake holders in Cooum restoration including PWD, Metrowater, Chennai Corporation and CMDA will sit together and study the notification. We will then formalise plans to meet this deadline," K Dhanavel, secretary PWD told The Times Of India.

Several crores have already gone down the drain in the name of Cooum's restoration but the condition of the river remains the same. The brief spell when the 2005 rains restored its health, is a distant memory; people today continue to travel past the Cooum's banks holding their noses.

In 2009, the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board had said that the level of dissolved oxygen in the river was low due to rampant pollution. The release of untreated effluents and sewage into the river continues without much hindrance, though Metrowater claims to have plugged all sewage release points to Cooum in 2005.

The latest plan of the government to restore and beautify the Cooum, launched by deputy chief minister M K Stalin in December 2009 includes the creation of proper sewage systems for town, village panchayats and muncipalities in upstream areas and strengthening of existing sewage systems. Most of the sludge that accumulates in the river is due to untreated waste released from urban settlements outside city limits and slums along the riverbanks. The River Authority has been formed to devise an action plan to permanently plug the flow of such domestic and industrial waste into the Cooum, dredge and remove the sludge in the river, and finally relocate the slums along its banks. Going by the progress, the task appears to be an impossible one.
 
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