Road ‘not on record’ suffers without repair

Locals demand that the officials should take up the repair work before the monsoon.The Thalambur village panchayat, which includes Nattam and Karanai villages, is situated on the Old Mahabalipuram Road (OMR). According to sources, there are 10,000 families in the Thalambur village, which is located several kilometres away from Siruseri SIPCOT. Commuters who need to travel to SIPCOT from Tambaram used to go through the Karanai-Medavakkam Road, a 17-km stretch. Apart from that, many educational institutions and shopping complexes are also located on the stretch due to which thousands of vehicles use the road on a daily basis.

Locals claimed that the road was laid in 2003 by the Rural Development Board of Kancheepuram district and since then, officials failed to maintain the road.

The commuters said that if the road was not repaired, it will be difficult for them to travel on the stretch.

“Even now many bikers skid on the road and get injured frequently,” said Aadarsh from Irumbiliyur, a regular commuter. “I used to travel to my office in Siruseri via Karanai-Medavakkam Road. As the road is in a bad shape, I started taking another route and have travel 20 km extra,” he said.

Commuters also claimed that the road is not properly lit and during nights, it’s difficult to travel on the bumpy road. Despite filing several petitions with the Highways department, the local body and district Collector, no action was taken to repair the road, claim locals.

When contacted, Highways Additional Engineer Suvi Chandran said, “We were not able to repair the road because 9.8 km of the road is not in Kancheepuram district or Chennai city records. A few years ago, the road was handed over to the Chennai city, but it has not been recorded yet. We are taking steps to allocate special funds to repair the road and hopefully it will bedone soon.”