They were given promises, not flats

By Feroze Ahmed

CHENNAI, AUG. 25. In the early eighties, the Slum Clearance Board has built a multi-storey building for slum dwellers living by the Mylapore cemetery. About 200 allottees were given flats, the rest, promises.

According to the residents, about 60 of them were left out of the scheme and asked to pitch their huts on Ekambara Pillai Street. They were assured that accommodation would be provided to them in a year.

Two decades have passed and the families are still counting on that word. Living in thatched sheds with grand hopes of better living conditions, they have been busy chasing bureaucrats, politicians, and officials - only to get more promises.

Unlike other slum settlements, residents say the colony here is an officially approved encroachment. Meant to be a makeshift arrangement, it now remains forgotten.

The Ekambara Pillai slum is a major irritant for other residents of Mylapore. With the huts blocking the approach road to the cemetery, mourners have to take a circuitous route through R.K.Salai.

Besides, the burial ground is used as a dumping yard and an open air toilet by the slum dwellers.

The `squatters' are irked by the embarrassing lifestyle forced on them. Sans sanitary or basic amenities ``we have to use the burial ground or the roads for ablutions,'' says a resident.

The streets are inundated even by mild showers and, according to residents, the incidents of water-borne diseases are high. They have also to live with the acrid stench of burning bodies - ``about four or five times a day'' - and related health hazards.

``Many of the slum dwellers here suffer from respiratory diseases,'' says Mr. M. Arumugam, a social worker and health educator, DESH. However, no specific health programmes have been conducted here save for occasional awareness camps by NGOs.

Over the years, the hut dwellers have witnessed a marked improvement in the lifestyles of their former neighbours. They covet the privacy, hygienic conditions and comfort afforded in multi-storey buildings.

Says a resident, ``Officials sometimes ask us if we want to go to Okkiyam Thoraipakkam. That is not acceptable to us.'' Most of them find regular work assignments nearby, and fear that employment will be a struggle if they are shifted far away.

``We want the Slum Clearance Board to provide us accommodation here, preferably in a multi-storey building.'' The residents suggest a cattle-depot nearby could be used for the purpose, or at least as a temporary solution.

However, the number of original inhabitants is uncertain. Residents claim many of them have misplaced the `tokens' issued but contend that the Board would have a record of actual claimants.

Mr. M. Thambi Durai, chairman, Zone 10, had assured that he was taking steps to relocate the huts on the cattle depot and have the road to the cemetery cleared. But, with political fluctuations in force, the slum dwellers are banking on yet another word.

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