Slow work, rain add to bumpy ride in Ramapuram

CHENNAI: For hundreds of IT employees, roads in Ramapuram have always been a roller coaster ride. The IT employees, who mainly stay in hostels in the area, state that roads are unmotorable due to indiscriminate digging for laying water and sewage pipelines. Ramapuram, located just opposite to DLF IT Park and L&T, is a densely populated locality and a preferred area for IT professionals. 

For the last eight months, residents of Shanti Nagar, Giri Nagar, Nandanam Nagar, Easwaran Koil Street and Anandam Nagar have been enduring the brunt of slow-paced pipeline work and the situation worsened after rainfall recently. 

When TNIE visited these localities on Monday, the main access road—Shanti Nagar Main Road—opposite DLF IT Park was cut-off with 90% of the road dug-up. Even walking on this road is risky. Roads are slushy and heavy machinery was at work hurriedly filling up loose mud. Only a narrow patch of road on the left corner, which is intact, was being used to reach the Porur Main Road, which is also choked due to Metro Rail work.

P Kannan, an IT employee, said most internal roads are damaged. Deepak Nambiar, resident of Giri Nagar, said his nephew's school bus stopped coming to the area almost five months ago. "Everyday, I have to drop her on my bike at a pick-up point 3 km away. At least on a couple of occasions we narrowly escaped falling into the roadside pits."

When contacted, local councillor K Raju said, "These are long-pending work. Sunday rain was unexpected. I spoke to officials concerned and requested them to fast-track the work. Heavy machinery has been deployed to repair the roads. The pipeline laying work on Shanti Nagar main road is over and the road will be restored within a week's time."