Like in the Chennai airport, Metro rail stations now face the problem of falling tiles and breaking glass panels.
On Saturday, around 7.15 a.m., 28-year-old Vijaya, a resident of Bharathi Nagar, was on her way to take the train from Shenoy Nagar station. As she entered the concourse level — the area where tickets are sold — a tile from the roof came crashing down and she suffered injuries on her head, sources said.
Treatment given
Staff at the station rushed her to hospital, where she was given treatment and discharged.
“This is not the first time a tile broke off from the roof in a Metro Rail station. A few weeks ago, a passenger had a narrow escape when a tile fell close to him as he was walking inside the Egmore station,” a source said.
Officials of Chennai Metro Rail Limited (CMRL) said the construction was carried out under supervision. “It is unfortunate that tiles are falling. But we are making sure this doesn’t happen again,” an official said.
It is not just tiles, even glass panels are breaking at the Nehru Park and Pachaiyappa’s College stations. Two months ago, glass panels broke at the Pachaiyappa’s College station.
Meanwhile, two more panels have broken at the Nehru Park station, sources said.
“Since these are toughened glass panels, even if they have cracks, they will not break,” an official said, adding that they were designed to hold the glass particles intact.
An expert at IIT-Madras said the fact that such issues were cropping up in a relatively new structure showed that the construction was shoddy.
