GUNTUR: As many as 19 Anna Canteens are to serve the public in Guntur city. The Guntur Municipal Corporation has decided to start Anna Canteens offering meals for Rs 5 only. According to reports, nearly 50,000 people come to Guntur every day to work and they are forced to spend a lot on food as the hotels and restaurants charge Rs 50 to Rs 150 per meal. The GMC officials went to Chennai and studied the subsidised canteen system there and are planning to implement the same in Guntur city.
Anna Canteens that started at Velagapudi and Amaravati got a good response from the public. Besides this, Opposition YSR Congr-ess MLA of Mangalagiri, Alla Ramakrishna Reddy, has also started his own meals scheme called Rajanna Canteen which provided lunch for Rs 4 and a tiffin for Re 1. The Rajanna Canteen also got a good response from the public at Mangalagiri and the YSRC hopes that the Rajanna Canteen would be helpful in attracting the public to the party. Last year, the GMC had planned to start Anna Canteens in Guntur city but the move didn’t take off.
Many people from the adjacent areas come to Guntur every day to work in the construction sector, the chilli yards, vegetable markets, wholesale markets and other places. S. Balaji, P. Ramulu and others who come from Peda Kakani to work in Guntur said that it would cost them at least Rs 50 per head to have lunch at a normal hotel which offered a plate of rice with sambar, dal, vegetable curry and pickle, and the hotels would charge extra for asking for some more rice. They lamented that they would have to spend Rs 30 as fare if they chose to go home for lunch. They welcomed the Anna Canteen proposal and said that these canteens would feed the general public and not just the poor who came to Guntur to work.
GMC commissioner Ch. Anuradha said they had recently studied the Anna Canteens in Chennai, where 407 canteens were serving the public. She said the GMC was planning to start Anna canteens in 19 areas of the city where people could take tiffins and have lunch at subsidised rates.
