A row of fruits shops and a refreshment stall have eaten up the wide pavement on Kasthuribai Street in Gandhi Nagar. This thoroughfare is located opposite the Perambur Locomotive Works.
Customers visiting the stalls park their vehicles haphazardly and smoke on the pavement.
The pavement on the other side is overgrown with grass. It is occasionally used by hawkers to sell their goods. Garbage is often dumped there.
People buying from these fruit stalls and the hawkers, park their vehicles on both sides of the road, leaving motorists with a considerably constricted carriageway. The problem of haphazard parking reaches its height in the evening, when most of the hawkers set up their businesses.
An open ground on the stretch, towards Loco Scheme Street, has been ‘converted’ into a dumping yard.
Residents are equally concerned about encroachments by two-wheeler mechanics at many of the roads at Perambur Loco Works.
For example, a long pavement, starting from Gandhi Street and touching Thiruvalluvar Street, GKM Colony, Muthu Kumarappa Street and Dr. Anna Street, has been taken over by two-wheeler mechanics, water tanks and transformers. Residents living in the vicinity dump their wastes on this pavement. That’s only a part of the problem.
“The stretch after Jambulingam Street is relatively empty but motorists come at such speed that many are afraid of walking on the road,” said T. Shiva, a pedestrian.
Repeated calls to the authorities concerned evoked no response.
