The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Reporter's Diary

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jul 11, 2006

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Reporter's Diary

Commuters' troubles

The lack of adequate traffic regulation by the MTC and police authorities is causing a great deal of congestion. Indiscriminate parking of vehicles, particularly share autorickshaws and MTC buses outside the T. Nagar terminus, on South Usman Road causes immense hardship to road-users. As other vehicles are parked at the bus stand, bus drivers stop at a distance and the commuters have run behind the buses. Commuters point out that indiscipline among several bus crew also goes unchecked. Though space has been earmarked for buses to halt in front of the Egmore railway station and Adyar Gandhinagar bus stop, some of the drivers stop outside the bus bays.

Stopping speeding

Two-wheelers and four-wheelers on the East Coast Road this past weekend came in for police scrutiny for rash and negligent driving, besides driving under influence

of alcohol.

Vehicles also came under the scanner of speed guns with a posse of traffic police personnel stopping vehicles that were whizzing past on the ECR. While the police action may be praised, the police did not show similar sharpness when they saw several speeding vehicles with party flags.

Causing trouble

Regular visitors to Anna Nagar Plaza were shocked to see a group of youngsters drinking alcohol in a car parked in front of the plaza. One of the visitors said this was becoming a regular event as the car had been seen parked around 8 p.m. in the same place over the

past one week.

Shop owners also feared that such behaviour in public might repel visitors.

Pension woes

Pensioners who used to work under the Posts and Telegraphs have a long pending grievance. They receive their pension from post offices and they have been allowed to open postal SB accounts where their pension is credited for full or part withdrawal by the pensioner concerned.

But invariably, they are made to queue up at a counter meant for serving different types of customers including SB/RD/fixed desposits/NSC or Kisan Vikas Patrika besides senior citizens' schemes.

In some post offices there are now separate queues for senior citizens to receive their pension.

Their demand now: a separate queue on those days when the pension is disbursed.

Burning problem

Waste vegetables and other garbage are not only dumped on the side of the railway track along Perambur High Road, but are burnt regularly creating a huge cloud of smoke (photo). This not only causes pollution but leads to poor visibility for road users.

Contributions: K.T. Sangameswaran, T.S. Shankar and K. Lakshmi

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