The Corporation, under its ‘Clean Thoothukudi’ initiative, cleaned the common graveyard and cremation ground opposite VOC College here on Friday.
As the sprawling common graveyard and cremation ground, established in 1916 on 50 acres of land, gets marooned during monsoon every year, the public suffer a lot while performing the last rites. Digging the pits for burying the bodies becomes tough due to stagnant rainwater on the campus. To make things worse, thorny bushes have grown abundantly at several places.
When COVID-19 waves hiked suddenly the death rate in the port town peaked to an unusual proportion and the officials suffered a lot to bury the bodies following COVID-19 protocol with the stagnant water effectively thwarting their attempts.
Hence, the Corporation has taken-up the initiative of cleaning the site before the onset of northeast monsoon this year. After cleaning the bushes, the pits and low-lying parts of the graveyards are being filled-up with soil to drain the rainwater into the nearby drainage channels.
“We’ve started this work with the help of a voluntary organisation. Besides clearing the bushes, the areas where water stagnation was reported till last year, are being filled-up with sand. Moreover, ‘neer marudhu’ and ‘pungai’ trees will be planted along the roads within the graveyard after the end of these two major tasks. We’ve planned to complete this work within the shortest possible time,” said Mayor Jegan Periyasamy, who inaugurated the work in the presence of Corporation Commissioner T. Charusree.
City Health Officer Arun Kumar, Executive Engineer Ruben Suresh Ponniah, and other Corporation officials were present.
