Patients visiting the facility in Nandambakkam face problems
Sewage from St. Thomas Mount, Nandambakkam flows through drains
Dumping of meat and poultry waste have also contributed to stagnation
TAMBARAM: Patients visiting the Employees State Insurance Corporation Dispensary in Nandambakkam and residents in the neighbourhood have been putting up with the stench emanating from the stagnant sewage outside the healthcare facility for over three months.
More than 200 persons, many of them ill and aged, visit the dispensary located on Mount-Poonamallee Road everyday and have little option but to jump over the stagnant pool of sewage outside the facility’s entrance. Doctors and officials of ESIC regretted that the Government did not come forward to sort out a problem affecting the people. They were at the receiving end from patients for not maintaining the dispensary’s surroundings, they added.
Sewage generated from parts of St. Thomas Mount and a few areas of Nandambakkam flows through stormwater drains running parallel to the Mount-Poonamallee Road. It gets drained into a huge canal near the Chennai Trade Centre, before entering the Adyar river. For the past few months, sewage has been stagnating on these drains on a stretch of about 200 metres.
Enquiries revealed that encroachments by commercial establishments and obstructions prevented the flow of sewage on the drains beyond the ESI Dispensary. Moreover, dumping of meat and poultry waste choked the drain, residents of Harikrishnan Street near the dispensary said.
Officials of Nandambakkam town panchayat said they could not step in to solve the problem as the spot came under the jurisdiction of the Cantonment Board.
Officials of Cantonment Board said they received little cooperation from the Nandambakkam town panchayat.
Though they were ready to even deploy earthmover equipment, they could not operate within the Nandambakkam town panchayat, where there were obstructions in the stormwater drains.
They said problems of stagnation of sewage and inundation of rainwater during monsoon had become a regular feature.
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