Chennai: The future of Amma weekly markets and Amma theatres, two projects mooted by Chennai mayor Saidai S. Duraisamy with recent back-to-back meetings, remains bleak. With the daily operation cost, employee salaries and Amma canteen expenses draining the corporation exchequer forcing the civic body to go for loans, the populist projects are likely to be shelved for some time, informed sources told DC.
In simple terms with the tenure of the council ending this October, these projects would remain a non-starter despite Chennai corporation council appointing nodal officers and consultant for both the projects recently.
“With already Amma canteen eating into corporation’s revenue, new proposals are to be shelved for some time for lack of funds”, a top government official told DC. In case of Amma theatres, some of the elected representatives wanted to convert the T. Nagar Sir Pitti Thyagaraya auditorium into a theatre, but the local residents and dance artistes protested against the conversion of an auditorium in to a theatre.
In case of Amma theatre to come up at Shenoy Nagar technical issues were cleared, but again due to project cost and with the National Film Development Corporation being roped in as a consultant, this project will also take some time to materialise.
However, a section of engineers in the civic body is confident that both these projects will see the light of the day by 2017. “The corporation has designated 54 state officers as nodal officers for the weekly market scheme and there are officers in the ranks of directors, general managers and department superintendents roped in for Amma weekly markets. Field inspections and logistics were discussed, but the scheme will get delayed due to monsoon and civic polls, a corporation engineer said.
“The corporation has outsourced most of its basic works like clearing garbage, park maintenance and relaying of roads justifying that the civic body was saving money by privatising such civic works, but where is the money coming for these freebies and populist schemes need to be answered”, said S. Purushothaman, president, Chennai Managarathchi Anaithu Oozhiyar Sangam.
