Chennai: Tamil Nadu government Thursday inked a
pact with the Singapore Cooperation Enterprise (SCE) with a
view to clean up the highly-polluted Cooum River in the city.
The Memorandum of Understanding with SCE, an agency
formed by the Ministry of Trade and Industry and the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs of Singapore, will allow the latter to
share inputs in project development, sharing expertise with
local engineers and advise the state government on various
aspects of Cooum revamping.
The SCE team is on a three-day visit to the state and
scheduled to make field visits tomorrow, a government release
here said.
Deputy Chief Minister M K Stalin had visited Singapore
last year to study the cleaning up process of Singapore river
and submitted a report to Chief Minister M Karunanidhi.
Later, the Chennai River Authority was formed with Stalin
as the head to take up the cleaning up of the 65 km long river
originating from the nearby Tiruvallore district.
Industrial discharge and other wastes had turned the
river into one of the most polluted water bodies in the state,
with successive governments initiating various projects for
its clean up.
PTI
First Published: Thursday, March 18, 2010, 15:51