“In 10 months time, a building with 88 two-bedroom apartments will come up here,” said Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, as a group of daily wage labourers hopefully listened on. The date was July 31, 2018 and a foundation stone for the promised apartment complex in Mundamveli, a suburb in Kochi, was laid.
But two years down the line, the same residents who had listened to the Chief Minister’s words with gleaming eyes, on Wednesday, ran out of their cramped homes as water gushed into their one and two-bedroom houses, following heavy rains. The residents say that this is a common occurrence.
P&T Colony near Kadavanthra, inhabited by around 83 families, is situated along the banks of the Perandoor Canal in Kochi. It is one of the first places in the city to get flooded in case of a heavy downpour. With the city witnessing heavy rains since Wednesday morning, water overflowing from the Perandoor Canal, which has become nothing short of a highly polluted drain, inundated the colony.
With residents being forced to leave their homes for a relief camp once again, people of the colony are feeling betrayed.
“We are all daily wage labourers who don’t have any other means to secure a safe house. For the past nine years, we have been living here and have held many protests for a safe place to live. Even after the CM laid the foundation stone for the apartment there has been no progress,” said Dhanalakshmi Manoj, who drives an auto rickshaw for her living.
“We are fed up of going to relief camps everytime it rains. The politicians who only turn up to ask our votes should at least open their eyes now,” she added. Her son and ailing mother too were forced to leave home as water entered the structure on Wednesday.
The foundation stone laid by CM Pinarayi Vijayan with a promise of permanent rehabilitation, lies as it was, without any further developments. Despite two years passing, not a single brick has been laid in the proposed site owned by the Greater Cochin Development Authority (GCDA).
TNM spoke to the officials concerned, about the reason for the huge delay in constructing the apartment complex.
Authorities said that the apartment was to be constructed using GFRG (Glass fibre reinforced gypsum) panels which, when compared to a concrete building, could be completed at a lower cost. According to officials, FRBL, a joint venture company of Fertilisers and Chemical Travancore (FACT) Limited and Rashtriya Chemicals and Fertilizers Limited, was given the charge to supply the required GFRG panels.
“But the company suddenly stopped its production due to some reasons. We then had to finalise another method of construction and remake the whole estimate. The estimated cost of the project also shot up drastically. The file is now under consideration with a technical committee under the state government. It should be finalised in a couple of months,” an official said.
He claimed that once approved, it will only take a few months to complete the project.
Meanwhile, the residents who bear the brunt of the ‘technical delay’ continue to stare at rising levels of water inside their homes, as the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) has announced heavy rain across the state in the next few days.