Chennai: A vacant land allotted for park by Tamilnadu Housing Board on First Main Road, Eri Scheme, Mugappair, has now become a garbage segregation and bio-decomposing spot.
Speaking to News Today, Dhamodaran, a social worker residing at Eri Scheme, said, “Five years ago, we residents gave a petition to officials to develop the vacant land into a park. During that time, the then Ward Councilor P V Tamilselvan and government authorities promised to honour our request. Since we don’t have Councillors for the past 2.5 years, we met the officials and gave petitions regarding this issue. However, we got a reply that no fund was allocated for it.
“Initially, the officials constructed stone benches. People who visited the place to do exercise made use of it. So, we were confident of getting a park on this land. But everything has changed. Workers dumped sand and gravel to build blocks and concrete structures. We slowly stopped going to the land and waited for the completion of the work,” he added.
Alleging that civic workers used the land for some other purposes, he added: “When we questioned them, they said, it was temporary work and they would clear it as soon as possible. Few months back, we saw the workers busy with constructing some pits. Now, this land is used for decomposing garbage collected from this locality.”
Another resident said, “The stench from this spot is unbearable and few tenants who were residing nearby have shifted to other places. People moving on this stretch were closing their noses and some stopped coming this side. We were afraid of diseases that might spread because of the waste being processed here.. We request officials to take necessary steps to shift this activity to some other area and develop this land as park.”