Date:04/11/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/11/04/stories/2007110450040100.htm

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Dwellings for conservancy staff mooted

K.V. Prasad

— Photo: S. Siva Saravanan

CLUTTERED AND UNSAFE: The tenements on V.K.K. Menon Road where the Corporation’s conservancy workers live.

COIMBATORE: The Coimbatore Corporation is exploring the possibility of constructing tenements for its nearly 3,000 conservancy workers and their families. This comes in the wake of the collapse of the Tamil Nadu Slum Clearance Board building at Ukkadam here on October 19 that killed 13 persons.

The conservancy workers now live in similar buildings in various areas such as Kamarajapuram and on V.K.K. Menon Road.

The workers and their unions are resisting moves to re-settle them in the outskirts.

Mayor R. Venkatachalam says: “They cite their working hours as the reason for insisting on a site in the city for re-settlement. They argue that they cannot commute long distances to reach their work spot.” This has made the Corporation think of the possibility of re-location within the city. “I have requested the officials to find out whether there is any Corporation land within the city on which tenements can be constructed,” the Mayor says.

The Corporation is set to start door-to-door collection of garbage under its proposed waste management project. As 72 wards over an area of 105 sq km have to be covered, the Corporation needs to have workers at hand.

A meeting was held at the Corporation recently to discuss the precarious condition of the multi-storeyed tenements in which the workers live. A number of equally vulnerable tiled roof houses have sprung up around these tenements and some workers live in these also.

The Corporation is now planning tenements for these people in addition to the ones that are to be constructed for slum dwellers as part of the basic services to the Urban Poor project under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission. While the tenements built under JNNURM will be provided on ownership basis, conservancy workers may have to pay a rent for the ones provided to them under a separate project.

“We are exploring the possibility and nothing has taken shape yet. But we see a need for the tenements for the conservancy workers,” says the Mayor.