Date:01/12/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/12/01/stories/2007120160910500.htm

Tamil Nadu

March 31 deadline to apply for drainage connections

Special Correspondent

TAMBARAM: Alandur Municipality has set March 31, 2008, as the deadline for residents to apply for house service connections of the underground drainage project.

A decision was taken at a routine meeting of the local body on Friday. As soon as the meeting began, elected representatives, cutting across party affiliations, said that despite completion of the project, stormwater drains continued to be filled with sewage. The fogging operation was not enough to control the menace.

The councillors attributed the problem to the letting out of sewage into these stormwater drains by individual houses and apartment complexes that did not have underground drainage connections. It was sad that the project did not achieve the desired level of success.

Alandur Municipal Chairman R. S. Bharathi said though there were 29,000 households in the local body, the number of house service connections in the sewerage project at present numbered only 16,000. There is a plan to provide free connections to about 800 poor families under the Basic Services for Urban Poor of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission, he said.

As the remaining households were yet to come under the project, sewage and grey water flowed through the stormwater drains resulting in unhygienic conditions. As it was more than three years since the project commenced, the remaining houses had to apply for the individual connections.

March 31, 2008 was fixed as the deadline for the remaining households to apply for the connections, Mr. Bharathi said, adding that penal action would be initiated against those who failed to do so.