At the special grievance meeting convened by the Corporation for issues related to water supply and drainage, 46 petitions were received from the public and most of whom hailed from the newly-added areas of the Madurai Corporation.
The petitioners said that it was necessary to regularly conduct such a grievance meeting as most of their issues had not been taken care of, even after submitting petitions numerous times.
Problems pertaining to the supply of water were aplenty and represented to the Mayor and Commissioner.
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R. Muthu, a resident of the K. Pudur Industrial Colony in ward 45, said that she had been submitting petitions for the last eight months demanding regular water in the area but nothing had happened.
“At present, we are only getting water from the Corporation once every eight days,” she said.
Stating that the Corporation had installed a public tap on a patta land belonging to her, D. Jagadheswari of Managiri said that she had submitted a petition asking for it to be removed.
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“The issue has been there for long. We hope it will get redressed only when we meet higher authorities directly,” she stated.
K. Mohammed Rafiq, a resident of Tahsildhar Nagar, flayed officials in charge of the area there and said that despite being registered and eligible for a water connection, he had still not received it. “When I approached the Assistant Engineer here, I was asked to meet the fitter who then demanded Rs.27,000. When I refused to pay, I was told that a connection wasn’t possible to my house since the pipeline was too small,” he alleged.
A resident of T.M. Nagar near Mattuthavani, S. Premsingh said that despite the area being thickly populated with many more residential projects on the way, no proper underground drainage system was in place.
“There are so many apartments coming up and we need a proper drainage system in place before more people settle here,” he said.
A. Marimuthu, Secretary of the Mangala Vinayagar Nagar Residents’ Association, said that despite submitting a petition six months ago about the poor state of the drainage in wards 3 and 4, they had received no response yet.
Despite the grievance meeting being restricted to water and drainage-related issues, many persons also represented other grievances to the Mayor such as asking for community halls in their wards as well as complaining about duplication of land documents.