Residents of Saibaba Colony demand better facilities at burial ground

The near two-acre plot off Mettupalayam Road appears more like a dump yard with footwear, domestic waste, debris and much more strewn around. Thorny bushes only complete the picture.

But it is not a dump yard but burial ground, say residents of Saibaba Colony, K.K. Pudur, Velandipalayam and those in the neighbourhood. The condition of the burial ground had deteriorated in the last 10 years or so after the Coimbatore Corporation gave up the effort to build an electric crematorium there, says K.K.M. Selvaraju, a K.K. Pudur resident.

The Corporation shifted the burial ground there after it built the new bus stand on Mettupalayam Road. Along with an acre of land, it added another 80 cents to establish a burial ground for the Hindu residents of the aforementioned areas.

The Corporation also allocated land for burying members of the minority community there.

Soon after demarcating the land, the Corporation decided it would build an electric crematorium there. To help the Corporation, the then Nilgiris MP Master Maathan had also allocated a sum from his local area development fund. But nothing much happened thereafter, he says.

N. Kannan, another resident, says it pains to see the poor maintenance in the place where his kith and kin were buried. Things would not have come to such a stage had the Corporation heeded to the residents’ request to fence the place. The deterioration in maintenance will affect the poor residents in the three-km radius.

For, it is people from the lower economic strata who used the burial ground. Now that they cannot bury the dead there, they will have to go to Kavundampalayam to access the nearest burial ground. And going to a neighbouring locality to bury is not easy for the residents who were born and bred in the area and would like to have their dead ones buried in the same locality.

Area councillor M. Ravindiraraj says that he has raised the issue several times in the Council and also given written representations to no use. The officials have now promised him that they will take up the work soon.