Water sports at Marina Beach, restricting vendors etc, GCC having plans
Posted on: 17/Dec/2019 10:13:15 AM
How would you react when you hear that water sports would be played in the highly popular Marina Beach in Chennai? Feeling surprised and excited right!!
Important piece of information is GCC or Greater Chennai Corporation on Monday, 16th December 2019 told the Madras High Court that it was exploring the feasibility of conducting water sports at the Marina Beach. The point is special wheelchairs that could move on the beach sand was already available free of cost at the beach for the benefit of the physically challenged persons.
The Chennai Corporation Commissioner, Mr G. Prakash revealed to the division bench comprising of justice Vineet Kothari and Justice Suresh Kumar about the beautification of Marina Beach and how as a part of this beautification the vendors on the beach had been streamlined and arranged along the service road in 16 bays and in 3 vertical road perpendicular to the service road.
It must be taken into account that the Madras HC on the last hearing of the case insisted on the better arrangement. The point is GCC has proposed to shift the vendors from the bays along the service roads and instead arrange all of them in as many as 9 vertical rows perpendicular to the service roads to get a clear view of the sea from the roads
It was later pointed out by Mr G. Prakash that a total of 1544 vendors have been identified on Marina Beach in the year 2017 and out of these 1486 vendors were given ID cards. The remaining didn’t turn up to receive the ID cards. In this year 2019, fresh enumeration was carried out in Marina Beach to know about the vendors and it was found that the beach had 1962 vendors. Point is out of those only 808 vendors had the old ID cards.
It is important to mention that the civic body had decided to restrict the number of vendors on the beach to 900 and want to supply them colourful pushcarts made of steel and fibre. An amount of Rs 27.4 crores is needed to buy these pushcarts and the money has been sanctioned already. This was brought out by the additional advocate general Mr S.R. Rajagopal in the Madras HC.
For issuing smart cards to each of the 900 licensed vendors before handing over pushcarts to them, a proposal had been forwarded to the municipal administration department. By this, the pushcarts would be returned on the cancellation of licence of a particular vendor and allotted to the next licensee. For the beautification and to keep Marina neat and clean, 175 sanitary workers have been deployed on a shift basis and restrooms/toilets have been constructed at 6 different places on the beach.
