Govt to rectify flaws in free CTV

Chennai, Sep 20: The Tamil Nadu government will take steps to rectify flaws in the implementation of free colour TV scheme, State Chief Secretary L K Tripathy has said.

He was responding to complaints that colour television sets had been distributed to people, who already had them.

Addressing a 'state-level press conference' here last night, he said despite doubts expressed from various quarters, 26,000 CTV sets had been distributed in the first phase.

In the second phase, as many as 25 lakh TV sets would be distributed before March 2007, he said and added the programme would be closely monitored and flaws, if any, would be rectified.

''The entire process is transparent so that no one lifts a finger at the government,'' he added.

Mr Tripathy said 64 tribal hamlets in Nilgiris district had been provided with power supply and TV sets under the scheme.

On the scheme of developing and distributing wasteland to landless farmers, he said a cluster approach would be adopted for the scheme wherever contiguous stretch of ten acres of land was available in a village to minimise displacement of the residents.

The programme would be continuously monitored and improved upon based on the government's experience in the first phase of its implementation, he added.

The government might not be able to give two acres of land to everybody but the idea was to empower landless agricultural workers, he said.

On Chikungunya, Mr Tripathy said the Namakkal model was being adopted in the rest of the districts to eradicate the viral disease.

An awareness programme, involving school children, had been launched and hospitals had been provided with adequate medicine to treat people affected by chikungunya, he added.

Secretaries belonging to different departments also highlighted the government's achievements during the last four months.

UNI