Monday night’s rain that continued till early Tuesday has, as always, brought to the fore issues that the city residents face after rain. Of the many, one is the waterlogging of subways and underpasses that help people move between the eastern and western parts of the railway track.

Tuesday morning was no different. The city had witnessed an average of only 85.76 mm rain and it had left the Lanka Corner underpass, Avanashi Road subway, Kaleeswara Mill underpass, the underpass on Shastri Road (near Kikani school) and North Coimbatore subway waterlogged.

The Coimbatore Corporation rushed its men and machinery to the spots to flush out the water. Commissioner in-charge S. Sivarasu said that at the Lanka Corner underpass, the civic body started the work around 6 a.m. and finished it within a couple of hours.

Similarly, the Corporation had also quickly cleaned the Kaleeswara Mill underpass, which connects Brooke Bond Road with Kattoor. By around 9 a.m. the Corporation was also able to throw open the Shastri Road underpass for traffic.

At the Avanashi Road subway and the North Coimbatore one, it faced problems in that during power cuts, the Corporation was able to run only the diesel-powered machinery.

For close to three hours, the flushing-out operation suffered. And this delayed the completion of the task, he said.

Seeing the Corporation barricades at the entrances of the subways, motorists took the flyover. This led to an increase in the number of vehicles, which moved at snail’s pace, on the flyover and had a cascading effect on the nearby traffic signals as well.

Mr. Sivarasu said that the Corporation was prepared for rain.

It had asked its men to be in a state of alert to remove trees as and when they fall, flush out water from low-level areas and restore roads for traffic at the earliest.

He also said that people could get in touch with the Corporation to solve rain-related civic problems.

The Ayanavaram post office on Portuguese Road is nearly 90 years old, and of late, has begun to show its age.

The old building is currently plagued by the accumulation of empty, unusable mail bags that litter its premises.

For over a year now, these bags have collected in heaps, and exposed to the weather all year round, have become breeding grounds for insects and even snakes, customers allege.

“The post office has now become inconvenient and unsafe because of this garbage. I can’t leave my child alone at home, so she used to accompany me here earlier. But she was bitten by a bug once when she was standing near the mail bags and so, I don’t bring her here anymore,” said Janaki Anatharaman, a customer and a resident of Ayanavaram.

The empty mail bags come to the post office periodically from various places and are divided into ‘sound’, ‘repairable’ and ‘condemned’ bags. “The sound bags are re-sent for use to the district bag office; the repairable ones are fixed here and then sent back, while the condemned ones which are unfit for further use are supposed to be disposed of.

The sound and repairable ones are removed from the post office premises but the condemned ones have been here for nearly three years now,” said an official.

Officials say they have already asked Chennai Corporation officials on several occasions to remove the unusable bags but to date, nothing has been done.

This apart, since the entire post office is in bad condition, maintenance work including painting, fixing of tiles and some patch work is being carried out at a cost of Rs. 12 lakh.

Some officials though, say this is not enough.

“Even when there is a light shower, the building begins leaking. Since it is old, ideally, the building should be demolished and reconstructed. But the authorities have decided that just some patch work will do,” an official said.