The Hindu 21.08.2010
Corporation to educate public on dangers of causing blocks in drainage
Special Correspondent
| Stickers conveying these points will be distributed across the project areas |
COIMBATORE: The Coimbatore Corporation has embarked upon an awareness campaign on the dangers of creating blocks in drainage in the wards where its Rs.377-crore underground drainage scheme is being implemented.
Out of the total 72 wards in the city, only 26 have underground drainage provided by the Tamil Nadu Water Supply and Drainage Board. And, these areas come under the “old municipality”. These wards constituted the Coimbatore Municipality, which became a city corporation in 1981.
With a number of town panchayats and municipalities merged with the city since then, the number of wards increased by another 46. Now, these wards are being provided with underground sewers.
The Corporation is already battling the problem of blocks in the existing underground drainage. The blocks caused by the dumping of garbage, food waste from hotels and eateries and bio-medical waste from hospitals and laboratories lead to the leaking of sewage through manholes. Roads have to be dug up in order to remove the blocks.
In order to prevent this problem in the areas where the lines are being laid now, the Corporation has got into educating the public on the dangers of causing the blocks.
The civic has said in a press release that it launched this exercise on Independence Day. Handbills containing explanation of the menace, what contributed to it and what problems it created were being distributed.
Stickers conveying these points would be distributed across the project areas. These could be pasted on the inside of the doors of the toilets and on the premises of establishments where the abuse of the drains was likely to happen.
The Corporation referred to instances of workers dying of asphyxiation while trying to remove blocks in the drainage. This could be avoided only if the public refrained from abusing underground sewers.
