It has been more than a week since Cyclone Vardah devastated the green cover of Kancheepuram, Chennai and Tiruvallur districts.
Even as the sun beats down on the southern suburbs, most streets in the interior parts including Sri Rajarajeswari Nagar, Ranga Colony and Velachery Main Road under Sembakkam Municipality and Sabapathy Nagar under Moovarasampet village panchayat are filled with heaps of garbage.
Plastics, polythene covers, metal scrap, mattresses and other household articles rendered unfit for use due to prolonged water seepage are all dumped along with the garbage.
Though garbage was cleared for a few days after the cyclone, it was stopped due to paucity of manpower and lorries to shift the tree branches from the street corners.
Garbage lit
Fed up with the administration, residents lit the garbage on fire on vacant lands which led to several residential localities in Sembakkam, Kamarajapuram and Rajakilpakkam vulnerable to health hazards.
“In Sabapathy Nagar, garbage has not been cleared for the past 15 days,” says G.P. Babu, secretary of the Federation of Moovarasampet Welfare Associations.
The panchayat is already struggling to handle the huge volumes of garbage and after Vardah the situation has worsened, he says.
“The damage created by rain and gusty winds were bad. We are even more worried about what might happen next if garbage continues to pile up like this. Clean-up operations are going on, but most of them stick to the main road while the inner streets are completely ignored. Many residents took it upon themselves to clean up the small roads,” said Preethi Swaminathan, a resident of Sembakkam.
Residents of Ranga Colony pointed out that the municipality had played a key role in removing bigger tree branches that fell on the electric poles in Metha Nagar and surrounding areas.
However, the municipal officials should have shown the same spirit in clearing day-to-day garbage also, they said.
Block level official at St. Thomas Mount Block and Sembakkam Municipal Commissioner could not be reached for comments.
‘Most wards cleared’
A senior official from the Directorate of Municipal Administration said with 60-odd municipal staff, most wards were cleared off trees and other garbage over the past nine days and the remaining wards would be covered in the next few days. but
