Heavy rains a near death blow to Chennai's infrastructure, rebuilding an uphill task

Chennai: After over two weeks of rainfall-induced flooding, Chennai has finally received some relief. Rains have stopped for now and with flood waters receding, most schools and offices have re-opened. Chennai Corporation which has been slammed for poor infrastructure, has put together a restoration that it hopes to implement over the next few months.

The worst rainfall in Chennai for nearly a century has put the city’s civic infrastructure through the harshest of tests: a test that seems to have failed, at least for now. Water-logging, sewage leaks and rivers in spate are the enduring image of the two-week-long floods that dealt a near-death blow to Chennai’s infrastructure.

But the city’s civic body, the Chennai Corporation, has firmed up a re-building plan that it hopes to implement in the next few months. The corporation’s first order of business will be to re-lay nearly 7,000 arterial roads that have crumbled in the aftermath of the flood. The civic authority has already begun work on 5,000 of these roads and has set itself a 3-month deadline to complete the task.

Talking about this Vikram Kapur, Commissioner of Chennai Corporation said, “Another 2,000 roads will be taken up very shortly. Our emphasis is that in the next 3 months, we should ensure all roads in the city — whichever have been damaged by the rains — should be smooth and operable.”

While re-laying of roads is a priority, the Corporation says it’s committed to complete de-silting of storm water drains on a war-footing. CNN-IBN learns that the plan is to use maximum mechanization to de-silt existing storm-water drains, and build newer, larger ones in the next three years; this, to ensure better management in floods in the near future.

“To extend the storm-water drain network, and ensure that newly added areas are kept free of floods, the honorable Chief Minister has already sanctioned us a major project for 4,500 crore, which we have already commenced, Vikram Kapur said.

But even as this re-building begins, the Corporation’s priority will be to get this infrastructure up and running as soon as possible. Tamil Nadu’s Assembly Elections will take place in early 2016, followed by civic polls soon after. And that’s why the current administration wants to take no chances in re-building and re-commissioning Chennai’s new-look infrastructure as soon as possible.