On Tuesday morning, the residents of Pinjalasubramanian Street in T. Nagar in Chennai woke up to the scene of pink colour sewage on their streets. Even after a week of repeated complaints to the Chennai Metro Water Supply and Sewage Board, there has been no response from them.
“For the past one week after the floods, we have a lot of sewage water in our locality. We have complained to the Junior Engineer, Assistant Engineer of Chennai Metro Water Board of our area. They keep saying that they will send someone. They come to the nearby showrooms like GRT and Kumaran and clean the sewage and pump out the water but do not care to come to our locality”, said Jayanthi Natrajan, a resident of Pinjalasubramanian Street.
“We have had drainage water for the past six months but after the floods, the water-logging has increased drastically. We have even complained to the Managing Director of the Redressal Committee but of no use, no one comes here to pump out the sewage water. Finally, we were able to meet the councillor and he sent staff to pump out the water. But they only cleaned the main roads and left. The residents are cleaning up all the drainage water from the streets for four days,” said Vidya, another resident of the area.
There are about 28 flats and four blocks in the street.
By Monday evening things were getting back to normal for the people in Pinjalasubramanian Street but by Tuesday morning the area is again flooded with sewage water. “We live on the 4th floor and the sewage smell reaches our house. All the sewage from the main road and big shops also comes to our locality,” said Vidya.
In the last floods, the sewage water had got mixed with drinking water in the locality. So, this time they cleaned all the pumps, tanks and then started using the drinking water. “All this was done by us not the metro water officials,” said Jayanthi.
It is not only about water-logging, the people in the street are also falling sick. “One lady had repeated vomiting which also later led to low BP. Another person slipped in the sewage water and had a fracture,” added Jayanthi.
The Pinjalasubramanian Street residents have also filed a complaint at the Chief Minister’s Cell. “What else can we do now?” said Jayanthi.
The News Minute tried contacting the area engineer of the Chennai Metro Water Supplies and also the Assistant Engineer but they did not respond. We called up the Complaint Cell of the Chennai Metro Water Supply and Sewage Board and they said they will again lodge a complaint and contact the officials of the area.