Rains expose shoddy work in city drains

Residents, motorists and activists, who were thoroughly disappointed with the Corporation, say that the urban body has not learnt any lesson even after the city faced its worst floods in 100 years. Further, they wonder that if the city could not withstand even an hour’s downpour, how it would be able to tackle the monsoon season. This comes in the wake of Greater Chennai Corporation’s claim that all storm water drains have been desilted and ready to carry the flow to their full capacity. 

However, corporation officials defended their work by claiming that workers would be pressed into service to check the collection points in the drains during rains and remove blockage, if any. 

“Though Chennai was marooned during last year’s floods, officials have failed to carry out adequate flood precautionary measures and things remain the same in the city,” says K Gnanavel, a private firm employee, who had a tough time wading through the water-logged Beach road on Thursday. The situation was so bad that the motorist had to halt his vehicle for nearly half an hour near the Lighthouse. After this frustrating experience, his comment was “people in the city better get ready for a repeat of December deluge this year.”  “As rainwater does not recede quickly due to clogged storm-water drains, motorists at times crash into craters and suffer injuries. Another problem is that vehicles splash water on each other while negotiating through sheets of water in many places,” said R Kannan, a motorist who regularly take the road via Chepauk. 

A Veerappan, former special chief engineer, Chennai region, said that it was a fact that city roads get flooded even for half an hour’s rain. “Further,  cross roads are also flooded and many users are stranded for more than an hour in different places in the city. Though civic body boasted that they have completed cleaning up some stretches of the major drains in the city, the corporation should go the extra mile”. When contacted, a senior corporation official maintained that they had undertaken storm water drain works in a full-fledged manner. “Even if there are blockages in the rainwater collection points on main roads, workers will remove them and public can also cooperate by alerting the respective zonal officers about stagnation points,” he said.