50 Indian expats in UAE pledge month's salary for flood-hit Kerala
Abu Dhabi, Sep 12 : Fifty members of the Kerala Social Centre (KSC), an organisation of expatriates in the UAE, have pledged to donate their one month's salary to the Kerala Chief Minister's Disaster Relief Fund (CMDRF) to help people in the flood-ravaged state.
The initiative was in response to an help appeal made by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan to all Keralites on a Facebook post last month, KSC General Secretary Bijith Kumar told Gulf News on Tuesday.
The KSC's managing committee meeting decided that all its 16 members will contribute their one month's salary, he said.
Thirty-six other members also made a similar commitment, Kumar said. They included professionals and mid-and-low level employees working in various sectors in the UAE capital.
The KSC and its affiliate organisation, Shakthi Theatres, have already contributed Rs 2 million to the Chief Minister's Fund, said A.K. Beeran Kutty, President of the KSC.
Kutty and his colleagues directly handed over the cheques to senior Kerala ministers last week at Thiruvananthapuram, the report said. He said the centre had also sent 6 tonnes of relief goods for the flood victims.
The 46-year-old KSC is a prominent sociocultural forum in Abu Dhabi.
One of the five Indian community organisations in the capital registered with the UAE Ministry of Community Development, the KSC caters to around 4,500 people, including around 1,500 members and their kin.
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Ex-minister Ramanath Rai hits out at BJP leader Ashoka for ‘irresponsible’ comments on KC Venugopal
Mangaluru: Congress leader and former minister B Ramanath Rai slammed BJP leader R Ashoka for calling AICC General Secretary KC Venugopal an agent of the party high command, and asked if the general secretary and other office-bearers in the BJP were commission agents too.
Rai, who addressed a press meet at the Congress office in the city on Friday, expressed fury over the recent comments of the BJP leader that Chief Minister Siddaramaiah was presenting himself in a shameless manner in public life. Ashoka, who is also Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in the Karnataka Legislative Assembly, had said that the Congress government had ‘broken every previous record on corruption-related controversies’.
“Ashoka has spoken with sheer ignorance and displays his lack of maturity, as he often does while facing the media. KC Venugopal has been working at organization of the party and it is unbecoming of Ashoka to criticize Venugopal as he did,” Rai told reporters.
“Being in a responsible position, how acceptable is it for Ashoka to pass disrespectful, random comments about another leader who also holds a responsible position? If KC Venugopal is indeed an agent of the party high command, what should we consider BJP leaders to be? Are they brokers?” he asked
Commenting on Ashoka’s allegations of corruption in the Congress government in Karnataka, Rai pointed out, “The KSRTC land was sold to private parties when he (Ashoka) was transport minister. We can find several such cases across the state, which need to be probed.”
The former minister, however, refused to comment on the incident that occurred at Mangaluru airport during CM Siddaramaiah’s visit to the city recently.
Former mayors Ashraf and Shashidhar Hegde, Congress activists Vishwas Kumar Das, Subhodaya Alva, Shabeer, Baby Kundar, Padmanabha, Nazeer Bajal and Prem were present.
