CHENNAI: The recent death of Sethuraj who was electrocuted after a damaged electric pole fell on him, has shocked the suburban locality of Chitalapakkam in Chennai. A visit to the locality by Express revealed that this was an accident waiting to happen. Contrary to the electricity minister's statement, Chitlapakkam is filled with old, rusted, ill-maintained poles weighed down by a maze of cables.
Near Tambaram Sanatorium after crossing the MIT flyover, Express spotted an electric pole which was bent in the middle with the cables almost touching the ground. Near NSN school in Chitalapakkam, a
transformer and an electric pole next to it were both rusted. The cement coating on most of the poles had chipped off and the rusted rod was seen inside. Also each pole had many strings of heavy cables
hanging and clustered.
A few more areas in Chitalapakkam which have damaged electric poles are Ramanar Street, MMDA Nagar, Kalaivanar Street, Ragavendra Salai, Babu Street, Kalyanasundram Street, Nehru Street, Gandhi Street, Shankaranarayana Street, Kaveri Street, Gomathi Street and Pradeep Avenue.
Severe shortage of manpower
Locals alleged that the main problem behind this issue was inadequate manpower with the Panchayat that has resulted in the shoddy maintenance of poles. They said that Sethu Raj's death could have been
prevented if Tangedco and Chitalapakkam Panchayat officials had carried out routine maintenance of poles, cables and transformers in the area.
"There are around 60,000 people living in Chitalapakkam alone which is divided into 18 wards. But there are only two workers employed by the Panchayat to maintain and repair electric poles. There are close to 100 poles which need to replaced immediately and this can only be done with more workers ," said Pallavi Kannadasan, a resident of Chitalapakkam.
P Viswanathan, a local activist, through an RTI reply found that there are just 11 officials taking care of electricity issues pertaining to Nehru Nagar in Chitalapakkam. "Nehru Nagar alone has 133 transformers, 54 poles and as many as 19,627 services connections. How can just 11 officials from Tangedco manage day to day maintenance? Also, there is a serious coordination problem between Tangedco and Panchayat officials," he said.
Dangers of low lying cables
Moreover, lack of milled roads has caused the cables to hang dangerously low. Six month ago, in Pamban Swamigal Street where almost all overhead cables lie very low, roof of a school bus touched the cables. After repeated complaints by residents it was raised higher after a month. But now they have come back to its previous state.
Poles erected by the Panchayat are 18 ft (low tension cables) and 24 ft tall (high tension cables). And for stability four to six ft of the pole is buried underground. But as roads are not milled in
Chitalapakkam before a new layer of tar is laid, height of the road keeps increasing. This inturn makes the gap between the cable and the road lesser and lesser.
Residents said that officials had temporarily fixed cement bases to some poles and the ones without the base sway dangerously even during light rains. Though the cement layer outside the entire length of the
pole is intact, the parts inside are rusted which makes the pole snap easily.
"For single poles that are located in dead ends, stay wires must be fixed on either side. These wires will give support and hold them in place. The pole which fell on Sethu Raj was a single one. If it was
stabilized with a stay wire it wouldn't have fallen on him," said Lakshmi Krishnakumar, a resident and a close friend to Sethu Raj's family.
As a permanent solution, residents demanded that all rusted electric poles be replaces with new ones before monsoons set in by October. "It is sad that only after a person's death officials take our complaints seriously. Another rusted pole on the street where Sethu Raj lived was hurriedly replaced on Thursday morning," said Lakshmi.
A Tangedco official said that a new batch of electric poles have been sent on Thursday to be replaced in the Tambaram division under which Chitalapakkam comes. " Assistant and additional engineers of each ward are inspecting the entire locality to spot out old poles and will replace them with the new ones. Minister also asked the public to inform their local Tangedco office if they spot poles in a bad
condition," he added.