Brand ‘Amma’ has now shifted its focus to mineral water. After the popular budget canteens and vegetable outlets across the state, Tamil Nadu chief minister Jayalalithaa on Friday announced the launch of nine ‘Amma? mineral water units that would offer water at R10 a litre.
The state transport corporations will set up these units to ensure safe water while reducing, to some extent, the financial burden of the people, Jayalalithaa said. The government initiative would be a boon to the people, especially Chennai residents who were badly hit by a recent strike by packaged drinking water firms.
The units resorted to strike after the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board shut down 92 manufacturing units found operating without licences.
The strike by over 200 mineral water companies in Chennai rendered residents helpless as most of the households depend on water cans, other than the supply from Chennai Corporation.
The price of a R20-litre water can went up to around R70 during the strike.
Jayalalithaa said in the first phase, a production unit would be set up in Gummidipoondi with three lakh litres a day capacity . The necessary equipment would be procured by the road transport corporations. The water bottles would be made available to buses plying on long-distance routes.
The CM said transport corporations would sell a litre of bottled water at Rs 10 as against R15 by the railways and R20 by private players. The official launch of the first production unit will be done on late chief minister C N Annadurai’s birth anniversary on September 15. The other units would be set up across the state after that, she said.
Jayalalithaa had recently launched 31 vegetable outlets that will sell at subsidised rates.
Her budget canteens that sell R1 idlis are very popular. As per the statistic available for April , an average of one lakh idlies, 25,000 units of sambar rice and 15,000 curd rice were being provided at these centres every day.