The New Indian Express 07.01.2010
PWD, TNSCB flout norms to evict slum dwellers
CEHNNAI: “We are the ones who help keep the city clean. Now the government has decided they no longer want us in Singara Chennai. They are throwing us out of our homes, where we have been staying for ages, to some dumpyard far away from the city,” said an anguished Vijaya.
The slum dweller was testifying at a public hearing, organised to focus on the issue of development induced slum evictions.
Similar tales of woe narrated by the evicted slum dwellers from 40 slums in the city on Tuesday brought to light the undemocratic practices adopted by the PWD and Tamil Nadu Slum clearance Board (TNSCB) in uprooting these people from their homes and banishing them into hell holes like Kannagi Nagar and Semmencheri 30km away from the city.
Under the Slum Clearance Act of 1971, a certain set of procedures has to be followed that were completely flouted by these bodies.
TNSCB had failed to serve notice to the slum dwellers and had evicted them by intimidation of the local police and then had ferried them in city garbage trucks to their destination, Kannagi Nagar.
The government’s commitment to provide for a slum-free Chennai by 2013 is obviously done by adopting strong-arm tactics.
These slum dwellers were mainly evicted due to projects like the Elevated Expressway, Metro Rail, Coastal Elevated Expressway, road expansion and river water cleaning projects.
Resettlement colonies at Kannagi Nagar and Semmencheri have been textbook examples of social problems, replete with high suicide rates, crime and lack of supportive infrastructure. Most people, daily wagers, travel back into the city to get their families a square meal.
“Dumping new settlers to the already polluted colonies is only going to compound the problems further,” said Dr K Shanmugavelayutham, Coordinator, and Chennai Slum Dwellers Rights Movement.
Geetha Ramakrishnan from Unorganised Workers Federation said, “The only remedy is to organise ourselves and stage protests till we find solutions and make the politicians sit up and take notice.”