Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore   

Civic body at its wits' end

ON THE one hand, the Coimbatore Corporation plans intensive measures for a clean and green city. On the other, it feels helpless as its properties are vandalised. Roadside parks, traffic islands and bus shelters have turned out to be sitting ducks for miscreants.

Saddled with the task of providing infrastructure and maintaining a clean city, the civic body seems to be clueless over how to protect structures put up for the public. It does not have enough manpower to provide protection.

Bus shelters with missing fibre or asbestos covers, slabs over open drains stolen, fancy lamps in traffic islands broken and fibre chairs stolen or broken in bus stands are a common sight in the city.

The most common of these forms of vandalism is damage to fancy lamps by stone throwing.

Barring the traffic islands or roadside parks maintained by private parties, the rest that are maintained by the Corporation have struggled to present a pleasant picture. The lamps in most of these are constantly damaged. Replacements meet with a similar fate in no time.

Every year, the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) awards prizes to the best maintained islands and parks. Most of the prizes are won by private parties, with just a couple of such structures maintained by the civic body as contestants.

The Corporation has been painstakingly but unsuccessfully battling against graver offences such as sandalwood theft and pilfering of drinking water. But, these and the other offences are of such wide variety, voluminous in number and occur with frustrating regularity that the civic body is apparently at its wits' end to tackle all these that combine to pose a stiff challenge to it.

And, the problem is that the Corporation is not in a position to provide specific focus to each of these problems. With most of its resources concentrated on core municipal services such as maintenance of roads, drainage, solid waste management and providing drinking water over a 105.5 sq.km. city, the Corporation is unable to check vandalism.

A few traffic islands are abused; used to dump plastic bottles and other types of waste. If some grass is left on them, vagabonds occupy the islands.

Bus stands, which witness a heavy flow of passengers, are also victims of vandalism. Moulded plastic seats are broken frequently. Either the damage is deliberate or due to inappropriate use. But, the result is that for most of the time many chairs are unusable.

A frustrated Corporation then provided cement benches as protecting the chairs became impossible.

It is said that slabs over drainage canals are removed at night to either provide covers to septic tanks or for the iron rods (in the slabs) that can be sold as scrap.

The Corporation feels that it alone cannot ensure a clean and beautiful city. There has to be whole-hearted public participation.

But, vandalism, especially by persons in inebriated condition, can be put down only with some deterrent law.

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