The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Perungudi getting facelift, thanks to IT boom

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Dec 24, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Perungudi getting facelift, thanks to IT boom

By Saptarshi Bhattacharya

CHENNAI, DEC. 23. Thanks to the Information Technology boom on Old Mahabalipuram Road, the Perungudi township in the southern suburbs is getting an infrastructural facelift to accommodate IT parks and the increasing number of houses.

At least, 10 IT parks are to come up in the Perungudi town panchayat area, which has intensified the real estate activity. The panchayat is geared to lay roads, provide bus services, drinking water systems and other basic amenities. It has sought administrative sanction from the Kancheepuram district administration for development works costing Rs. 2 crores.

The Kancheepuram Collector, R. Venkatesan, said the panchayat was ready to spend from its funds to lay roads around the 35-acre Perungudi Lake, a major water source for the locality.

The Metrowater Board, which took over maintenance of the lake, proposed to strengthen its bund, deepen the lake and develop the water body as a reservoir to serve parts of the city too. Mr. Venkatesan said public toilets would be constructed to prevent defecation by slum dwellers on the lakebed.

At a meeting on Wednesday, the local residents sought from the Collector sanction of funds for widening interior roads, removing encroachments and introducing buses to interior areas.

T. Pius Joseph, president, Ramappa Nagar Residents' Welfare Association, said Perungudi was sprawling with housing colonies due to the presence of copious groundwater and good educational institutions. But correspondingly, roads, drainage and other facilities had not developed.

Recreational club

Among the other demands were construction of a recreational club near the lake and provision of boating facilities. A walkway around the lake and a park surrounding it would beautify the area and prevent misuse of water. Slum dwellers living nearby were using the lake to wash clothes and bathe their cattle, Mr. Joseph said.

Garbage segregation

The panchayat president, K.P. Skandhan, said the local body was generating about Rs. 2-crore revenue. It recently given a push to garbage segregation at source. In some areas, segregation began about two months ago. Very soon, the system would be refined and extended to other areas. He said that in the past two years, nearly 1,500 flats and 500 houses had come up in the township and many more were under construction.

Land value, which stood at Rs. 2 lakhs-3 lakhs a ground in 1996, shot up to Rs. 20 lakhs-30 lakhs now.

Spread over six square kilometres with a population of 23,481 (as per 2001 Census), Perungudi has 3,645 households, according to property tax records this year.

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