Thickly populated Chennai suburb drowning in sewage for the last 12 days

People cannot walk on the road and many are falling sick too in Chrompet.

(Residents of Kurunji Nagar at Chrompet have been struggling to lead a normal life amidst overflowing sewage| Photo- Ashwin Prasath)

CHENNAI: For 12 days now, residents of Nemilicherry in Chrompet have been living amidst sewage and swine after underground drainage pipelines were choked, spewing sewage from multiple manholes across the locality.

In C Murugaiyan’s house in AGS colony, for instance, sewage has been overflowing from the commode, flooding his toilet and eventually his house. The issue has affected at least 500 families in the area.

Although authorities pump out sewage in some parts, they have not been able to contain the overflow of sewage from the manholes, resulting in the sewage not drying up at all. When Express visited the spot, sewage had filled up almost every vacant plot in these areas and pigs were seen running in and out of houses in Kurinji Nagar.

It's a tough task to walk through these inner roads as sewage has stagnated for almost one feet

“Everyone here wades through sewage to get to work, children are carried to school. If it is one or two days, it’s fine but it has been close to two weeks now. People are already falling sick,” said Murugaiyan.

The main underground drainage pipeline that passes through the Nemilichery main road collects sewage from areas near the MIT bridge and Radha Nagar from where it is connected to Nanmangalam and, in turn, pumped to Keelkattalai and then to Perungudi. The blockage in the Nemilichery line has resulted in the stagnation of calf-deep sewage outside and inside houses in the area.

Sewage overflowed into a resident's house in Kurunji Nagar

Work is now on in Mettu street, replacing the underground drainage pipes that have corroded and been choked. However, these pipes had been laid only in 2006 and connections were given in 2011, as part of the underground drainage network laid in areas under the Pallavaram Municipality at a cost of over Rs 40 crores.

“This is not the first time that sewage has overflowed in the area although it is only now that it has happened at this scale. Officials did not have backup pipes in stock. Because of this, new pipes are being procured only now resulting in a delay in work,” said Chellaperumaal N, a resident of Kurinji Nagar.

When contacted, a senior official of the Pallavaram Municipality said that work to replace the pipelines would be completed within a matter of a day and that things would return to normal. “These pipelines last for only around 10 years. Since its past that, it is causing these problems and so we have to replace it,” the official said.