Rural sanitary workers to get salary hike in TN

CHENNAI: Sanitary workers in rural areas can rejoice as the State government made an announcement to increase the salaries of the workers to Rs 5,000 per month from present Rs 3,600.

According to an announcement made by rural development minister I Periyasamy in the State Assembly, the sanitary workers are engaged in collecting segregated solid waste door-to-door from households in rural areas. The government has allocated Rs 112 crore to implement the salary hike. As many as 66,130 workes will be benefited.

In order to carry forward the Green Tamil Nadu Mission launched by the State government, the rural development department will plant 70 lakh trees on government lands, road sides and other places at Rs 275 crore.

"Due to the increase of plastic usage in rural areas, water bodies are polluted. To prevent this, women self help groups are shredding the plastic. Plastic sherds will be procured from the self help groups and used to lay roads. By using 500 tonnes of plastic waste, 1,500 kilometres of roads will be improved in 2023-2024 Chief Minister's Rural Roads Development Scheme," the minister said.

The department will integrate State government schemes and central government schemes to provide basic amenities like roads, street lights and water supply in settlements of poorer section of the population. The basic amenities will be provided at Rs 1,500 crore. Similarly, water supply will be given to 10 lakh houses in rural areas are Rs 1,000 crore.

Another announcement noted that there is a difficulty in providing facilities in rural hill stations due to their distance between each other. "Infrastructure will be improved in those areas at Rs 30 crore," he added.

While responding to SP Velumani of AIADMK, Periyasamy said that former Chief minister Karunanithi launched Anna Marumalarchi Thittam to improve facilities in rural areas in 1996-2001. "But the following AIADMK government changed the name of the scheme into THAI Scheme," he added.

The department is also taking measures to improve Periyar Samathuvapuram across the state.