Visitors to the Uzhavar Sandhai at Singanallur require enormous amount of endurance to stay inside the place for even 10 minutes, as the premises has been filled with filth, slush and stink, thanks to the rains over the last few days.
Mud paths leading to the shops have turned slushy and no effort has been made so far to even dump some sand or debris to make the paths usable. Entry of autorickshaws and cargo vehicles to off-load and load vegetables have made things worse.
When there was a torrential downpour throughout the night last week, the canal that abutt the sandhai got chocked and the sewage water from North and West Coimbatore that is carried by the canal got on to the road and entered sandhai to make an exit through the other gate. This resulted in many farmers staying away from sandhai and routing their vegetable produces to the traders.
The Uzhavar Sandhai at Singanallur has about 134 shops besides 25 hawkers, who sell their produces along the paths and all of them have reconciled to the fact that they need to carry on with their trade in such a bad and unhygienic atmosphere, while the buyers are yet to come to terms in putting up with official apathy.
Jayalakshmi Ramesh, one of the buyers said that we are not asking for concrete floor or even paver block pathways. The least the authorities could do is to dump some debris or sand and run the road rollers on it to prevent undulated surface and stagnation of rain and sewage water.
People come to Uzhavar Sandhai for getting fresh vegetables at reasonable rates and elimination of middlemen helped the farmers, too. But it is so appalling to see official machinery not bothered about the condition of the sandhai despite the office being situated very much inside the sandhai. It is so annoying to see vegetables meant for human consumption being stocked and sold in such an unhygienic condition.
With the forecast for more rains and the fact that the North-East Monsoon is at the doorstep, it is time the civic body cleared and de-silted the canal that runs on two sides of the sandhai so that the sewage water does not enter the market once again making things worse, says Keerthana Senthil, who visits the sandhai twice a week. The road abutting the sandhai and leading to the housing unit and even the bylanes are in an appalling condition.
There is a pertinent need for the civic body to carry out a mass cleaning operation in and around the sandhai to make the place usable. Similarly, motorists want the space available beyond the extreme end of the Tiruchi Road to be made slush-free.
“We are not asking for extending the road width with black-topped surface, but the least that could be done is to dump some sand or gravel and run the road rollers, especially on either side of Tiruchi Road. This needs to be done for one km on either side of Tiruchi Road both on East and Western side of Singanallur traffic junction. This will certainly increase the motorable space and ensure easy flow of vehicles and avoid traffic jam at the junction,” says Paripoorani, a regular user of the stretch.
