Building debris and abandoned vehicles continue to eat into Chennai’s road space. While the number of vehicles and the population density has been growing by 30 per cent in the past one decade, the roads haven’t been widened to meet the growing demand. Besides debris, encroachments in commercial areas also eat into the road space affecting the free flow of traffic.
The irony is that post Cyclone Nilam the city corporation kick-started an intense cleaning operation to clear the city of garbage and debris. The civic body also cleared over 4,000 tonnes of additional waste including debris and remnants of uprooted trees. But the field officials often failed to check the building debris dumped by the realtors, corporation sources said.
“Two months back Mayor Saidai S. Duraisamy also announced a scheme to clear the debris and the roadside encroachments after visiting T-Nagar, Valluvarkottam and Kodambakkam areas, but the project failed as the field engineers failed to co-ordinate in executing the project,” a corporation insider said.
“It took more than six months for me to clear an abandoned car parked in our area. Despite complaints to the local police, there was no response and only after the intervention of police commissionarate the mysterious vehicle was removed from our area”, recalls advocate C.A. Prabhakar, who resides in Choolai.
When contacted, a highly-placed source at the Ripon Buildings said the project aimed at removing debris and abandoned vehicles from interior roads soon. In case of clearing abandoned vehicles, a lot of coordination is required from the city police and the roads will soon be cleared for traffic, the source said.