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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Civic amenities yet to improve here zone in

K. Manikandan

— Photo: A. Muralitharan

BURNING ISSUE: Garbage collection and disposal in Anakaputhur municipality has been a pressing problem for a long time. A view of the dumping yard.

TAMBARAM: There was a time when people used to find it hard to move out of the streets and lanes of Anakaputhur, a southern suburb near Tambaram. A couple of decades ago, it was a busy weaving centre with almost every other household spreading bamboo logs outside their homes to prepare cotton fibre before it was spun into different fabrics.

Traces of those days of yore still remain in Anakaputhur, with houses built several decades ago reviving memories of an era gone by. But today, it has become just another suburb with a local body administration struggling to meet the expectations of the people. Administrators and elected representatives of Anakaputhur Third Grade Municipality blame it on poor revenue and inadequate government support for the present condition of amenities, while residents charge that lack of initiatives from the local body were to be blamed.

Formed as a village panchayat in 1955, it was elevated as a town panchayat 10 years later, a status that it enjoyed till 2001 before being upgraded to a municipality. But for some visible improvements in a few pockets, there has not been any significant development in the recent past, residents said. The elected representatives counter the argument, saying they were executing as many welfare works as possible from resources available with them.

Once part of the Alandur-Pallavaram Combined Palar Drinking Water Supply Scheme, it was merged with water supply from Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board along with Alandur and Pammal Municipalities a few years ago. And today, residents are unhappy, not only with the quality of water supplied to them but also with the quantity. Against its actual requirement of about 15 lakh litres of water a day, it receives only 10 lakh litres.

The rest of the 5 lakh litres is supplied during the night and in the absence of adequate storage facilities, the local body is managing the once-a-week supply in most places and once in 10 days, in some of the tail-end areas. Among the 7,400 assessees in Anakaputhur, there are 3,400 individual water connections. Though the local body has two drinking water tankers, only one of them is deployed to reach out to remote pockets, while the other, shockingly, is used to clear septic tank waste.

Street-lighting is also below satisfactory levels, but the municipality was working hard to provide illumination to as many areas as possible, said Bharathi Kumar, Municipal Chairman.

Collection and disposal of garbage is still resorted to in conventional methods in this municipality that deploys a couple of tractors and three trucks. When even village panchayats with lower income levels have taken up source segregation and composting of kitchen waste, there is no such talk in Anakaputhur. In the absence of pressure groups and voluntary organisations, the local body conveniently collects garbage and disposes of it in an open, vacant spot near the banks of the Adyar river. Anakaputhur, too, contributes its share of contaminating the river as at many spots, raw sewage drains into this waterway.

Ms. Bharathi Kumar explained that funds crunch was an important reason why they were unable to carry out crucial development works. Through property and water tax and other charges from the municipality, they received a little more than Rs. 50 lakh annually. “We do not have industries and our revenue generation is low,” she said. And hence they were dependant solely on grants and subsidies from the State government for providing civic amenities. Unlike Tambaram, Mudichur and Pammal where composting of kitchen waste had support from voluntary organisations and corporates, they received none.

Nevertheless, now they were carrying out works worth Rs.1.3 crore, in addition to construction of a bus terminus at a cost of Rs.58 lakh, that included Rs.35 lakh from the Local Area Development Scheme of Union Minister and South Chennai M.P. T.R.Baalu.

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