Deccan Chronicle 09.11.2009

Road repairs on war-footing

Chennai, Nov. 8: Chennai mayor M. Subramanian on Sunday launched a door-to-door campaign to prevent the outbreak of any epidemic in the city and distributed chlorine tablets and pamphlets to create awareness about waterborne diseases among the public at Royapettah.

Mr Subramanian, who inspected the cooking centre at Gopalapuram, said the corporation had distributed 2.15 lakh food packets to the public, prepared in 19 cooking centres.

A senior corporation official said as on Sunday evening, 3,437 people were screened in 24 medical camps in the city. He said in order to prevent mosquito breeding, fogging was done in the waterlogged areas. The corporation has undertaken on a war-footing road repair works in 160 damaged city roads.

In suburban Eranavur, a railway overbridge on the Ennore Expressway was partially damaged and vehicular movement suspended. Several parts of the western suburbs including Ambattur, Annanur, Thirumullaivoyil, Avadi and Pattabiram were inundated. The situation was worst near Ambattur lake. Poor urban planning and concreting of roads at Annanur resulted in flooding of Sivasakthi Nagar. There were also frequent power cuts. Areas such as Velachery, Perungudi and Kottivakkam remained inundated for the second consecutive day, affecting normal life.

The vendors at Koyambedu wholesale market said they incurred huge losses over the last three days due to the rain. The fruit market recorded a loss of Rs 2 crore for three days while the vegetable market posted Rs 30 lakh loss for the same period. However, prices of all fruits and vegetables have softened by Rs 2-4, compared to previous weeks.