The indoor table tennis centre located in Chennai Corporation’s playground on South Canal Bank Road in Mandavelipakkam has been opened again.
On Sunday, Mylapore MLA Dha Velu did the honours.
This facility, which has a well-designed facility for TT has a few tables for training and for play. A private TT club called CTTF headed by A V Vidyasagar has taken charge of this facility where children from economically poor background are to be coached in TT.
Vidyasagar says these children have been given kits – TT racquet and T shirts and they will be coached here for two hours daily.
This facility was developed by the previous Mylapore MLA, R. Nataraj with inputs from former TT player and now coach, R. Rajesh. In the last days of the AIADMK government, this facility was formally opened. It had to remain closed due to the pandemic and also used as a polling booth in the recent Assembly elections.
R. Rajesh though challenges the manner in which this TT facility has now been made functional. He claims that GCC issued a tender process whose outcome is not yet formal and wonders how the facility can be used before the formal orders are given.
The GCC intended to, as it does with all its new sports facilities to contract it to a private entity, stipulating that some hours for play must be granted free to GCC school kids and the poor and use the other hours to grant paid private coaching to generate revenues to be shared by GCC and the contracted person.
An indoor badminton court built on the same campus is said to be managed on these lines.
