Mayor Saidai Duraisamy in response to the story ‘ >NE Monsoon at the door, city unprepared ’ in The Hindu on October 21, has said the Chennai Corporation began giving recommendations in August to various government departments to cope with the northeast monsoon.
According to a communication, Corporation engineers and zonal officers were advised on local-level civic interventions to deal with monsoon-related problems. The municipal administration and law minister, K.P. Munusamy, on Monday had ordered commencement of works by various departments to cope with challenges pertaining to the monsoon.
The civic body has identified 291 low lying areas in the city and commissioned 107 pump sets to bail out water. A total of 74 pump sets have also been commissioned in 13 subways maintained by the Corporation. Efforts have been taken to prevent inundation of subways in the past year. Gengu Reddy subway was the only facility to be inundated this monsoon, on account of CMRL works and the civic body bailed out water from the facility immediately to ease traffic congestion.
During the previous regime, the local administration completed only 15 per cent of the work on stormwater drains implemented under JNNURM. After the existing local administration took charge, 4,042 works that cover 70 per cent of the project have been completed.
The work on enumerating dilapidated buildings is underway. Work on repairing potholes on roads is also ongoing. A total of 1,127 concrete roads and 1,249 interior roads are being redesigned according to guidelines of the Indian Roads Congress (IRC). Another set of 8,146 roads will be redesigned and re-laid according to IRC guidelines shortly.
The norms of IRC were not adhered to during re-laying of roads by the previous administration, leading to their existing condition, the release said.
The number of cases of malaria, dengue, chikungunya and A (H1N1) this year so far, is lower compared to the same period in 2010, the release said. The number of malaria cases so far this year is 3,940. The number in 2010 was 7,768.
The number of dengue cases reported in the city this year is 96, compared to 284 in 2010. Chikungunya too, has reduced to 10 this year compared to 356 in 2010. Only seven people have been affected by A (H1N1) this year. The number in 2010 was 45, the release said.
