Work on a building for a new police station at Peerkankaranai has come to a grinding halt. While the police department has expressed its ignorance over the reasons for the halt, the incomplete building has now become a haunt for miscreants after dusk.
The station at Peerkankaranai is one among the three under Selaiyur Range of St. Thomas Mount District, the other two being Selaiyur and Chitlapakkam. The station currently functions out of a cramped premises at the intersection of Grand Southern Trunk Road and Sadanandapuram Main Road. There is no parking space for either visitors or police personnel. The rush at the police station has given rise to a lot of traffic problems in the area throughout the day.
The situation would get worse during the monsoon when rain water entered the building, crippling activity in the station. It was thus that the need for a new station was felt and in 1998, Peerkankaranai Town Panchayat parted with a piece of land measuring 13 cents (nearly 6,000 square feet) in Kamarajar Nagar, opposite the Primary Health Centre.
But it was only two years ago that Tamil Nadu Police Housing Corporation commenced civil works. The cost of the project is estimated to be Rs. 80 lakh, police sources said. The two-storey building was also to house the office of the Assistant Commissioner of Police, Selaiyur, which is currently functioning from a rented building on Velachery Main Road in East Tambaram.
T. Krishnan, a resident who lives very close to the building under construction, said a group of youth would hang around the area in the evenings and consume liquor. With the existing station creating so many traffic bottlenecks, work should be expedited and completed at the earliest for the benefit of all, Mr. Krishnan added.
Many police stations in the city’s suburbs such as the ones at Selaiyur and Adambakkam function from very poorly maintained buildings that come in the way of free flow of traffic. An Assistant Commissioner of Police in St. Thomas Mount District said issues related to delay were sorted out and that work was expected to resume after the Pongal season.
