Right in the middle of a culvert in Bharathi Nagar, Kalveerampalayam, is a hole. It is a recent development following the sinking of the manhole lid into the drain beneath. The shopkeeper near the damaged culvert, S. Justin, says the lid fell into the drain about 10 days ago after it started sinking by the day.
The residents with the help of the Coimbatore Corporation staff removed the pieces of the broken lid to allow the flow of sewage.
With the retrieved pieces of the lid on the one side, a wooden log on the other and a boulder on the third side, the residents have cautioned the road users to carefully negotiate the culvert, which after the damage has hardly any space for even a small car.
Mr. Justin says that the culvert was in any case car-unfriendly because the gradient on both sides was too steep to facilitate to easy ride over. The gradient of the drain beneath is also equally bad in that the sewage hardly flows from one side to the other.
Bharathi Nagar residents and treasurer of the residents’ welfare association, M. Sathasivam, says that the residents flagged the quality of construction to the officials when the work was in progress, but got little relief.
The manhole lid hardly had any support and that was the reason it sunk. The condition of the other culverts in the area are no good. This calls for inspection by senior officials because the culverts are hardly six months old, he says.
The damaged culvert has forced the residents using four-wheelers to reach Maruthamalai Road through Thoppil Nagar, a circuitous route. They say they want the Corporation engineers to attend to the issue at the earliest and also bring in accountability in to the system by punishing people responsible for such poor quality construction.
Corporation officials say the civic body has placed orders for a new lid and once that is ready, it will repair the damage.
