The Hindu                     07.04.2013

Sculptors work through the night to restore Ripon Buildings on time

Skilled Panruti labourers break from tradition, carry on after dusk, until 3 a.m.

As the deadline for the restoration of Ripon Buildings draws near, the Chennai Corporation is leaving no stone unturned to complete the work on time.

Sculptors engaged at the work site have discounted some aspects of their spiritual obligation in the race against time to restore the heritage symbol of local administration in the country.

The Chennai Corporation, this week, started using floodlights at Ripon Buildings to carry out the work at night. Traditionally, the group of sculptors restoring the building do not work at night. After a ritual at dawn, they start work at 8 a.m. and finish by sunset.

A few months ago, the civic body sought the services of a team of 20 sculptors from Panruti to expedite the restoration work.

The number of sculptors at work touched 67 after the new members joined the team and the work gained momentum. This was the largest group of sculptors carrying out restoration work at Ripon Buildings at any point of time.

Unlike other construction labourers, most of the sculptors shouldering the responsibility of restoring the civic body’s headquarters have been strictly following key aspects of their tradition.

“We used to avoid working at night and remain clean in the spiritual sense. We also have to bathe before the daily rituals and strictly stop work before dusk,” said one of the sculptors.

“Many of these aspects are strictly followed in temple architecture. Now, we work through the night, until 3 a.m., under artificial conditions, to complete the work soon,” he said.

Last week, a group of sculptors had to return to Panruti for urgent restoration of a place of worship they have been maintaining traditionally. As a result, the remaining sculptors had to resort to working at night to finish the restoration on time.

The civic body is unable to find more sculptors as artisans from other areas do not have the skill to work on lime structures. Earlier, a different group of sculptors had developed severe skin allergy and quit.

The restoration project, funded by Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), has been delayed by a few months because of the lack of skilled labour.

In addition to the sculptors, a number of construction labourers too are at work, restoring the Indo-Saracenic structure for the centenary celebrations of Ripon Buildings this year.

The sculptors have been able to restore a chunk of the façade but more than 50 percent of the exterior of the building is yet to be completed.

Ripon Buildings is the first heritage building in the country to have received funds under JNNURM.

The Hindu                     07.04.2013

Grievance redress system: civic body flooded with messages

City residents can send complaint as SMS to 92822 02422.

On Thursday, after reading in newspapers that the Coimbatore Corporation had launched a short message service (SMS)-based grievance redress system, Maniakarampalayam resident S. Nallasivam sent a message to 92822 02422.

He had mentioned his ward number, area and the street name to say that the light at the lamp post near his house was faulty.

The Coimbatore Corporation, which received the message, forwarded the same to the to the ward engineer concerned. The engineer by Friday morning had attended to the complaint.

Kannappan Salai Third Street resident D. Nandhakumar sent a message on Friday morning to the Coimbatore Corporation.

His grievance had to do with sewage stagnation in his area, which was a part of Ward 100.

The Corporation forwarded his message to the ward engineer concerned, who had attended to the complaint within a couple of hours by sending a lorry to pump out the drainage and clean the locality.

The two are among the hundreds of complaints the Corporation has started attending to on a priority basis after Mayor S.M. Velusamy and Commissioner G. Latha launched the SMS-based grievance system on Tuesday last.

Good response

Ms. Latha said that the response had been so good that the civic body was flooded with messages. By Friday afternoon her count stood at a little over 1,000 messages.

The Corporation had evolved a mechanism wherein it treated every complaint it received as a file. The information technology or the Information Centre personnel handling SMS-based grievance redress system forwarded the SMSes to the officials as e-mails. The engineers would act on them and then post updates.

If the engineers or sanitary officers or officials had redressed the grievances, the Corporation would close the files and the staff handling grievance redress system would send the completion messages to the complainants.

If not, the Corporation would keep open the files but send to the senders the status updates on what action the officers had initiated.

Commissioner Ms. Latha said that the civic body was still fine tuning the redress system in that it was attempting automation at every level and that senior officials were able to monitor the mechanism.

The officials would immediately redress those complaints that could be easily attended to. For those that involved planning or budgeting, they would initiate the process at the earliest.

Objective

The objective behind the purpose was to assure the people that the Corporation was responsive to their grievances.

Resident Mr. Nallasivam said that by launching the services, residents like him were relieved in that they could just send the message and wait for the work to be completed, without having to worry about issues like to who to contact to get the grievance redressed and going to the civic body.