Seventy-two-year-old K. Paramasivam, a retired staff from Heavy Vehicles Factory (HVF), waits at the newly-opened Tangedco office in Mittanamallee, Avadi. He has walked nearly two kilometres to pay his electricity bills.

With no clear directions to reach the new office, the two-storey Tangedco building, remains inaccessible to many consumers, who are mostly senior citizens. After functioning from a rented space in the neighbourhood for five years, the office had a new building in March.

“Tangedco should have placed signboards at key streets to direct people to its new office. Even for complaints, we have to walk all the way to the new office as the landline number is not attended most of the time,” fumes 66-year-old S. Packiyalakshmi, a resident of Avadi.

The Tangedco (Mittanamallee section) has more than 9,000 consumers covering areas including Raghava Nagar, Gandhi Street, Muthapudupet, Sabir Nagar and Mittanamallee after it was bifurcated from Pattabiram sub-station office on the CTH Road a decade ago.

Since the bifurcation, the local Tangedco office was functioning from a rented space in Mittanamallee. The only boon was that the rented premises was located in the centre of the neighbourhood. The new office is located far away from the key areas in the neighbourhood including Muthapudupet, Gandhi Street and Palavedu Main Road where most of the service defence officials stay with their families. The new office does not even have adequate staff including foreman and lineman to attend to consumers complaints. As the Tangedco building is located along the dry Morai lake, consumers fear that during monsoon, it might get difficult to access the office easily.

Areas around Avadi are dotted with defence establishments including IAF, HVF and OCF (Ordnance Clothing Factory) with retired government staff settled in areas like Muthapudupet, Brindavan Nagar, Sabir Nagar, Pattabiram Siding and Mittanamallee. Most of them prefer to visit local public utility services offices like post office and EB office in the neighbourhood to air their grievances than filing online complaints.

Tangedco officials says non-availability of land to construct its own building at the centre of the neighbourhood was the major reason to build a office along the dry lake bed.

“Steps will be taken to ensure easy access to the new office,” said a Tangedco official.