Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Monday told District Collectors to give the utmost priority to eradicating extreme poverty in the State.
At an online meeting, Mr. Vijayan asked them to ensure speedy public service delivery for the needy and marginalised sections of society, including the issue of cards to claim social security benefits.
He directed District Collectors to ensure consensus among stakeholders, including landowners and elected people representatives, before acquiring land for coastal and hill highways.
The government appeared mindful of the Oppositionโs warning to unleash an agitation on the lines of the anti-SilverLine (K-Rail) protests if the administration displaced fishers and cut off their access to the sea in the name of tourism and big-ticket development.
Moreover, the CPI(M) had counselled the government to address pressing livelihood and quality of life issues, the cost of living crisis, timely government service, and social security pension delivery to regain the political ground lost to the Congress and the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections.
Mr. Vijayan also asked District Collectors to create public awareness about the governmentโs decision to exempt LIFE Mission beneficiaries from the rigours and rules of Land Conversion, primarily wet and paddyland, for residential purposes.ย
The meeting also focussed on improving municipal services, given the public furore over the โnon-removalโ of garbage and local body roads left dug up for years to lay sewerage lines and implement the Smart City Project.
Moreover, clogged canals and urban stormwater drains were significant contributors to flooding that plagued urbanites recurrently.
Stagnant raw sewage-polluted canals choked with urban refuse were a fertile breeding ground for malaria and dengue-disseminating mosquitoes, a public embarrassment and a major put-off for the Stateโs tourism sector.
Mr. Vijayan instructed Collectors to create committees from the ward to the district level to rid the State of garbage, untreated sewage, plastic litter and hotel and hospital waste.
The governmentโs โWaste Freeโ Kerala would commence on October 2 and conclude on March 30. It would march in lockstep with a popular campaign spearheaded by the ruling front and opposition parties and their allied student and service organisations.ย
Mr. Vijayan also drew attention to the resurgence of infectious diseases, including viral fevers and cholera, which health authorities deemed eradicated. He asked District Collectors to spearhead preventive measures and ensure public-funded hospitals had sufficient medicines commensurate with the patient inflow.ย
Mr. Vijayan also directed the Collectors to initiate disaster prevention and relief measures, given the worrying forecast that the monsoon was set to intensify further over Kerala in the coming days.
