CHENNAI: Visit some of the bylanes of Triplicane and the stagnant water may make you wonder if the monsoon has already begun. That pleasant thought, though, lasts only till the stench of the overflowing manholes throws you off balance. That’s when you realise the water on the streets has its origins below the ground. Residents in several parts of Triplicane are forced to put up with constant drainage blocks. Adding to the problem, they complain, is the lackadaisical attitude of the Chennai Metro Water Supply and Sewage Board officials, who they allege only provide stopgap solutions that don’t last more than a day. Take, for example, Buchibabu street near the erstwhile Star theatre. Sridhar, a resident there, says he and his neighbours have been facing the menace of overflowing drains for the past two years. According to him, he has complained at the local CMWSSB office hundreds of times about the blocks, but the story is thesame every time. “Some men come and poke iron rods into the drains and temporarily clear the block. Within a day it gets blocked again and we are forced to lodge another complaint,” says a frustrated Sridhar. Move to South Mada street near the Parthasarathy Swami temple and the story is repeated. “These men come and poke around the drain, then ask the complainant for money. Every time they visit, we pay `200. If we don’t, they just go away,” says Narasimhan, a banking official. Officials provide several reasons for their inability to properly clear the blocks in the smaller lanes, the major one being that the lorries that clean the drainage are unable to enter them. When contacted, officials say the problem is two-fold. First the number of manholes has remained the same over the last several decades, even as the number of apartments has exploded. “The rule is that we should have one manhole for a certain number of door numbers. This is an old rule that does not take into consideration the fact that individual houses have been turned into huge apartments and the amount of waste has increased proportionately,” they say. Therefore the existing system is unable to take the load. Second, say officials, residents have the habit of throwing solid waste into their water closets, which makes its to the main drainage system, resulting in the blocks. “We keep telling them not to put sanitary napkins or plastic bags into the latrines, but it keeps happening. We are then blamed for not doing anything,” says a local office official.
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