Coimbatore City Municipal Corporation (CCMC) Commissioner M Prathap directed officials to cut water connections to apartments that let out sewage into storm water drains and roads.
CCMC Mayor Kalpana Anandakumar, Commissioner M Prathap and North Zone Chairperson V Kathirvelu presided over the zonal review meeting held in the North Zone Office on Friday where all 20 councillors of the zone including the chairperson (ward 10) and mayor (ward 19) were present. Before the councillors submitted grievances, Commissioner said the lack of funds has been hampering major works at CCMC and requested them to cope with the available resources till the situation comes back to normal.
The councillors including K Ranganayaki of ward 29 and Ambika Danapal of ward 27 said certain apartments and residential units release untreated sewage into the stormwater drains.
Prathap replied, "Officials must inspect such apartments, serve a notice, and issue a warning to the owners. Ask the apartment owners to construct a soak pit on their premises. A stormwater drain doesn't have enough capacity for such amounts of wastewater. If the owners fail to take these steps within one week of issuing a notice, department officials must cut the water and electricity connection."
Further, most councillors from the North zone pointed out the lack of sanitary workers in their wards and demanded the civic body assign more workers to dispose of the wastes immediately from the streets. The councillors also highlighted shoddy works carried out by the Suez Projects Private Limited in their wards and demanded to address the issues at once.
Many, including ward 1 councillor R Karpagam and ward 15 councillor T Santhamani said that there are lamp posts and light boxes in their ward without an EB connection. They said that over 300 lamp posts lie unused, so the civic body must take steps to sort this out.
As the Southwest monsoon has already begun, several councillors demanded the CCMC to desilt the stormwater drains across the zone thoroughly. Councillors urged CCMC to build proper drainages in the streets of the newly added areas to avoid inundation of the roads and houses during the rainy season.