Mirbakshi Ali Street, one of the bylanes, linking Royapettah with Zam Bazzar would be flooded even during a sharp drizzle forcing motorists to tread cautiously. But ahead of Cyclone Mandous, the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) covered the patches where water would normally stagnate. Though there is still water on the stretch, it was certainly not a nightmare for motorists as it was in the past and the street exemplifies the preparatory work done by the GCC.
A section of the residents took to social media to record its appreciation, while another section did draw attention of the authorities to certain inadequacies. One of them, D. Gnanasundaram, a former professor of Pachaiyappa’s College posted on Facebook: “The [erstwhile] AIADMK government removed trees only in the morning. But the DMK government removed everything in the night itself. It is a healthy competition. Let me congratulate the DMK government.”
Gagandeep Singh Bedi, Commissioner of the GCC, attributed the success to the combined effort of the Corporation with support from the State government and meticulous planning.
“We started pruning trees in the last couple of months. GCC has 267 power saws and 7 crane-operated saws and a total of 27,000 trees across Chennai were pruned. The exercise reduced the uprooting of trees in the gusty wind. When we knew the cyclone was coming, we again went on a pruning drive. Hoardings were removed and high mast lights were lowered,” he explained.
The accurate information about the cyclone from the government based on IMD forecast helped. “The GCC got a link with the integrated command control centre from the State disaster relief centre. The DFS model and European satellite model gave us uniform projections on December 6 itself of about 10 cm of rainfall in all 200 wards,” he added.
The GCC had prepared a ward-wise map on inundation and it is here the contribution from Sivaguru Prabhakaran, Regional Deputy commissioner (RDC), a civil engineer from IIT Bombay, S. Abdul Rahman, RDC Central, an alumnus from Guindy Engineering College, Anna University, and Amith, RDC South, who is also an engineer, made the difference. A “vibrant Chief Engineer” S. Rajendran, remained a crucial link between the bureaucracy and the technical team. They mapped the areas known for inundation with the help of zonal officers and went to the government for help.
“The Chief Minister was forthcoming and was very liberal with the allocation of funds. Initially the Corporation got ₹175 crore under Singara Chennai 2.0 project for all the major projects where there was heavy inundation. We also have the recommendations of the report prepared by former IAS officer V. Thirupugazh and he was particular that our design be vetted by IIT, Madras,” Mr. Bedi said.
There were gaps because there were other areas that were not covered in the earlier amount. Again the GCC received ₹84 crore for covering those areas. Another ₹270 crore came from the State government budget for covering individual roads across the city.
“We had the money and the challenge was to complete the work that was started in April. We decided to review the work thrice a week and it later became twice a week. All the monitoring officers also gave their views on the quality of the work,” he said while acknowledging the contribution made by K.N. Nehru, Minister for Municipal Administration, Chief Secretary V. Irai Anbu and Municipal Administration Secretary Shiv Das Meena.
“For the last nine weeks, Mr. Anbu had review meetings with us every Sunday. Mr. Meena, a civil engineer, also gave us a lot of technical inputs,” Mr. Bedi said.
The GCC categorised the works based on priority and completed top priority works before October. The planning helped during the rain in October and November. There were 900 motors in place and only 300 were used to pump out stagnant water during the cyclone.
