Don’t leave roads mangled till elections, K Selvaperunthagai urges TN govt
K Selvaperunthagai drew the government's attention to the delay in the repair of roads cut for drinking water pipeline laying works
Tamil Nadu Congress Committee president K Selvaperunthagai
CHENNAI: The perennial issue of not repairing city roads cut for laying drinking water/drainage pipelines in time echoed in the State Assembly on Thursday, with State Municipal Administration Minister KN Nehru guaranteeing expeditious repair of such roads in the city.
The issue dominated the agenda of the House after Congress president and Sriperumbudur MLA K Selvaperunthagai drew the government's attention to the delay in the repair of roads cut for drinking water pipeline laying works. Moving a special call attention motion in the House on the issue on inclusion of left out areas of Mangadu and Kundrathur municipalities for undertaking underground drainage works, Selvaperunthagai said that by this time next year, they would be busy engaging in the elections and hence attention must be paid to repairing city road cuts for laying pipelines.
Replying to the motion, minister Nehru admitted to facing challenges in the repair of such roads and said that the roads could be cut and pipeline laying works undertaken in the city only between 10 pm and 6 am. Attributing the problem in road repair to delay on the part of people availing household connections, Nehru said that the department was very particular about expeditiously repairing such roads cut for laying pipelines. However, the individuals applying for household connections delay the payment of fees for availing of domestic connections. Due to the delay by the individuals, the repair of the road cuts takes time, the minister reasoned, before assuring that the department would pay attention to repairing such cut roads, considering the impending election year.
The minister also added that the department took up on pilot basis a project in north Chennai to lay drinking water pipelines during the digging of the roads for underground drainage works, but the project could not be sustained due to apprehensions among the people about the possibility of contamination of drinking water due to breach in the drinking water pipelines.
