Exasperated devotees and tourists waited in long lines at the booths established at the five entry points near the towers outside Meenakshi Sundareswarar Temple here on Sunday to collect their mobile phones.
On the second day of the ban to carry mobile phones inside the temple, the visitors complained of slow retrieval and disorderly queues at the booths. Two types of storage systems - racks and vaults - have been established adjacent to the shoe stands.
The vault system with 100 slots was available only at the western entry. More vaults would be available by Sunday, said temple Joint Commissioner N. Natarajan.
Workers write the phone number and name of the brand on a slip, before placing the instruments in small cloth bags after collecting ₹10 a piece.
The bags are tagged for easy identification. A copy of the slip is provided to the visitor and safe custody is valid for four hours.
The workers advise people to switch the phones off before collecting them.
At the racks, 100 bags with phones can be hung on hooks. However, the visitors are sceptical.
“The phones are precariously placed and may fall down. The wooden vaults seem safer,” said a tourist from Finland. He said the rush in the evening led to people shoving one another at the booth.
R. Krishnamurthy from Coimbatore said it was impractical to leave the phones in hotel rooms or cars as they were needed for communication.
The Joint Commissioner said 26 workers had been deployed at the booths and the work would get streamlined in due course. Stern action would be taken in case of loss of phone, he added.
Shops to have lockers
“The work pressure at the booths will ease once shops near the temple start offering locker facility. We’ve fixed ₹ 10 so as to dissuade visitors from bringing mobile phone to the temple,” he said.
