NGO quarters junction to get a new look

KOCHI: As the final legal hurdle is over, the project to beautify the NGO quarters junction which stood thwarted for a long time, will commence soon. After months of dilly dallying, the Works department has finally confirmed that it will soon begin the work. The project worth Rs. 1.10 crore, initiated almost six months ago, has been crawling due to the stalemate between two prominent government departments - KSEB and PWD. The work came to a stand still due to a stay from the court given by O M Shameer demanding space for a shop in the market. Since then the Roads department and KSEB were passing the buck. “As there was a court stay till September 29 the dismantling work had to wait. More over, KSEB had also provided electricity connection to the shop but now they had cut off the connection. We have given a 48 hour notice to the complainant. If not done, we will take measures to dismantle it,” said Venugopal, assistant engineer, PWD.“This project lagged due to the negligence of the authorities. The KSEB were providing electricity to the shop. As per the information collected through RTI, the connection is not in the name of O M Shameer instead it’s in his father’s name O K Muhammed.  A three phase connection has been allowed for this temporary arrangement. They could have easily solved this problem earlier instead of passing the blame on each other,” said Yusuf, a vendor in the NGO market.  According to the information supplied by the public information of the Thrikkakara Municipality to another vendor, it is learnt that O M Shameer has also not renewed his license for the electricity connection for the year 2011-2012.As per the municipality rules only one member of a family could get a room to run a shop and it has already been allocated to his father O K Muhammad. Since Shameer had set up a make shift arrangement in the middle of the market, it was not possible to go ahead with the work. George K V, contractor who has undertaken the construction work said, “I could not proceed with the work as there was a temporary shop running in the middle of the market.”As the KSEB had provided connection to O M Shameer, the works department could not dismantle the make shift arrangement. “As KSEB had cut off the connection now, we hope that we would be able to proceed with the work,” said Venugopal.