Newly built buildings remain unutilised in Erode town

The Erode Corporation has made huge investments for the construction of a new bus stand for mini buses, a maternity centre and shops in the Nethaji market. But these new buildings remain unutilised though the civic body had finished the construction works several months ago.

The bus stand was established with underground parking facility at a cost of over Rs. 1.5 crore. The civic body invested over Rs. 3 crore for the construction of the maternity centre. A total of 90 shops were constructed at the Nethaji daily market at a cost of Rs. 60 lakh.

The civic body had taken up the construction works for these buildings about two years ago. It had finished works for the bus stand and the shops months ago.

A few works were pending under the maternity centre project.

Delay

“The civic authorities could have opened these buildings for public use. But they are causing unnecessary delay in the opening,” residents said.

Council meet

The Corporation councillors had raised this issue at the council meetings on a number of occasions.

The Collector had also inspected these new buildings and instructed the civic officials to open them for public use. Apart from these three projects, the civic body had also taken up the construction of a large public convenience complex at a cost of Rs. 1.5 crore at the bus stand built for mini-buses.

A new office building for the civic body was also coming up at a cost of Rs. 5.5 crore.

The civic administration completed 90 percent of the works for these two projects. “Now the works for these projects progress at a snail's pace and are suffering serious cost and time overruns,” Corporation sources pointed out.

When contacted, officials said that the civic body had taken steps to bring all the new buildings to public use as soon as possible.