CHENNAI: Barely four months after Karlina and Bhaskar M moved into their ‘new’ house in Perumbakkam from their earlier settlement in Chintadripet, they noticed the ceiling leaking. Today, their living room is lined up with buckets, pots and rags to collect and soak up the dripping water. “It gets worse after the rains.
If it is in this condition now, I’m scared of how the houses are going to be in four to five years from now,” said Bhaskar, who works in a private company in Chintadripet. Authorities have begun to fill the ‘new’ blocks in Perumbakkam only in the last six months.
In many of these blocks, houses on floors up to the fourth or fifth ones only, out of the total seven floors, have been filled so far. However, residents, who are being moved here with promises of ‘new’ houses to live in, find their houses having patchy paint finishes, leaky ceilings and shoddy plumbing.
Many residents were resettled to Perumbakkam from various informal settlements across the city, having already lost their livelihoods while some, who have retained their earlier jobs, shell out a large part of their earnings for travelling to and fro. When Express visited blocks 138, 139 and 140 in Perumbakkam, residents showed the leaking vertical pipes outside the blocks.
“The stench from the leaking pipes travels through the windows to our houses,” said Anitha R, a resident of block 138. “We have to use the staircases since the elevators are not functional.
Without lights there, I’m scared of sending my daughters after dark even to buy vegetables,” said Sharmila K. When Express visited the stairways, broken switches and empty bulb sockets were found on all floors of block 138. These blocks have no functional elevators.
“All seven floors of our block have been filled. Still, the elevator is not made operational,” said Revathi (name changed), a resident of block 65.
“There are many elderly people on the top floors,” she added. Speaking on the need for immediate assessment of the condition of the buildings, Vanessa Peter of the Information and Resource Centre for Deprived Urban Communities said, “The government should immediately appoint an independent technical committee to assess the quality of both newly built houses and old ones. The quality of the occupied houses is also a major concern as the constant leakage has affected the quality of buildings.”
When contacted, a senior slum clearance board official said the vertical water lines were laid a long time ago in those buildings.
“Due to thermal expansion and the age, the pipes tend to leak. If there had been people occupying the blocks since the time of completion, the problem would not have been there. This problem is due to the people occupying the blocks now after a long time. The allotments were late,” he said, adding that there was a proposal to replace the pipes and it would be implemented soon.