For nearly three years now, the oldest police station in the northern neighbourhood of the city has been functioning from a defunct Chennai Corporation school at B.R.N Garden in Broadway. A new building for the Muthialpet police station has been constructed but awaits a date from the Chief Minister’s office as she had been approached to inaugurate it.
The two-storey school from which it functions has been certified as dangerous to use by the public works department. The school building, which is almost 50 years old, was rented out to the police department in 2009 when the existing station building was demolished. Since then, over a hundred police personnel, who are part of the crime, law and order and traffic investigation wings have been struggling to get work done in the dilapidated school. The school-turned-police station has neither water taps nor useable toilets for the policemen. “The situation is worse during the monsoons as the records and other files get drenched due to leakage from the ceilings of the building,” said a policeman.
The new three-storey building for the Muthialpet police on Gelis Road in Broadway has been locked since the construction work was completed last year. Built at a cost of Rs. 80 lakh, the building has more than 30 rooms including three lock-ups on each floor, separate rooms for assistant commissioners of police for traffic and crime wings, writers rooms, consultation rooms, rest rooms for armed policemen, toilets and water taps.
ADVERTISEMENT
The Sembium police is in a similar plight too and has been working from a rented house off the Perambur Paper Mills Road for more than three years despite a new building having been built for them. Here too, more than 120 policemen are struggling in a flat with little facilities. Officials are yet to decide on a date for inauguration of the building.