Evicting families from their homes within the city and rehabilitating them in distant locations is depriving people of their income, and sleep. The government has been pulling down homes of several hundred families living along the city’s waterways and shifting them to slum board tenements – principally in Okkiyam Thoraipakkam on Rajiv Gandhi Salai.
Recently, over 300 families who shifted from Govindasamy Nagar in Raja Annamalaipuram, to Ezhil Nagar, were appalled by conditions. “There is no proper drainage and connectivity is very poor,” sa id Jayachitra Selvam. “We wake up at 4 a.m., prepare food, finish other chores and leave home by 7 a.m. to drop our children at school,” she said.
After this, the women go to work, mostly as domestic helps or other errand jobs, earning between Rs. 3,000 and Rs. 9,000 a month. The return, in over-crowded buses, is a strain. “We spend over Rs. 1,000 a month on travel. We do not get enough sleep and our children do not get even an hour’s time to play,” she added.
The families were living in cramped houses on government property in the city for decades until they were evicted on the basis of court orders. “We did not have access to decent sanitation, but we did not have problems with drinking water. In the new flats, we have only piped water and it is inside the attached bathroom and toilet,” said Jayarani who has three daughters. Older citizens like her find it difficult to climb the stairs to their homes.
Members of the Mylapore unit of the Democratic Youth Federation of India say the government should increase frequency of buses from Ezhil Nagar to Chennai and also ensure that not even a single earning member is deprived of her livelihood. Officials of the Department of Housing and Urban Development said the government had taken into consideration in its rehabilitation package, all necessary aspects including livelihood. They have schemes for financial independence and also vocational training programmes.
Tamil Nadu Slum Clearance Board officials added that they were improving the locality in phases. The families had moved into proper homes that would protect them from rain and flooding unlike their earlier huts. Efforts were also on to improve bus connectivity for the benefit of the families.
