CHENNAI: Despite housing nearly 100 factories and employing around 1,000 workers, mostly women, the Vyasarpadi Cooperative Industrial Estate lacks basic infrastructure.
Speaking to TNIE, workers said safety remains a concern as essential amenities such as proper roads, stormwater drains, and street lighting are almost non-existent here.
Workers commuting on two-wheelers and in heavy vehicles transporting goods from the industrial estate have to navigate the extremely damaged internal roads, which often results in back pain, they said.
“I have been working here for the past 15 years and have never seen the road being laid. With heavy vehicles plying on this stretch, it has become extremely damaged. Before Covid-19, there was an attempt to lay the road, but the work was halted due to the pandemic and never resumed,” a 48-year-old loadman said.
The lack of adequate street lights in the area also has raised serious safety concerns, particularly among women workers. A female staff, who works at a steel factory said, “Our work ends at 6.30pm and the premises turn dark. We have to use our mobile phone as torchlight to find our way out. It feels extremely unsafe until we reach the exit gate.”
TNIE also found that the roads are littered with piles of industrial waste and overflowing with sewage, making it difficult for workers to navigate it. During the monsoons, the estate is inundated with knee-deep sewage-mixed rainwater due to the absence of a proper stormwater drain.
Water stagnation persists for up to a week, and in some cases a month, as there is no natural outlet for runoff, workers said, and added that it also often enters the factories. The accumulated water is usually cleared only using motor pumps, they said. Workers want the maintenance of basic amenities on the premises, currently under the Industries and Commerce department, to be transferred to the Chennai Corporation for better upkeep.
TNIE’s attempt to reach the Industries and Commerce department officials was unsuccessful. Meanwhile, a staff at the Vyasarpadi Cooperative Industrial Estate administrative office said that the work would be taken up after the elections.