Vardah strips infrastructure of growth and green cover

Chennai: The back-to-back December deluge and cyclone Vardah, early this month had robbed the development pace of Chennai. The year 2016, which started with the memories of 2015 flash floods crippled the state infrastructure.

The overall loss figures, according to official figures published in the state revenue policy note and in the corporation revenue record crosses the Rs 10,000 crore mark. This also includes the Rs 3,000 crore spent by the state to expedite the relief and  rehabilitation, when former chief minister Ms Jayalalithaa was alive.

In the case of Vardah, there was no major loss of life, but the city infrastructure and its poor green cover were torn apart. Interior roads, electrical cables, and drains got damaged in the old part of the city and also in the suburbs coming under Kancheepuram and Tiruvallur districts.

To explain the damages to the inter-ministerial central team, the local bodies had also prepared two photo exhibitions, one at the Pallavaram municipality and another at the historical Ripon buildings.

Trade body Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham) estimated a loss of Rs 6,500 crore to TN due to Vardah. After spending Rs 3,000 crore to restore the infrastructure that was damaged during Chennai floods, the same facilities had suffered another serious blow within a span of nine months.

The city corporation, which deployed more than 23,000 sanitary workers, claimed to have cleared more than one lakh tonnes of green waste that accumulated with thousands of trees getting uprooted. And for this December, the damage cannot be estimated as the tree fall in Chennai had reached an all-time high with the city corporation planning for an extensive tree-planting program in 2017.

During last year, the state also organised special camps for the issue of certificates, documents like patta, educational certificates, Aadhaar card, voter ID cards, bank pass books, RC books, driving licences about 50,000 people enabling them to get new cards.

For about 37,000  students textbooks and notebooks were also issued. To prevent epidemics in during the last year 31,320 medical camps were conducted.
Post Vardah also saw continuous medical camps for about 10 days in Chennai and two neighbouring districts.

Following the two major disasters, the public works department to its part has now intensified the ongoing project of constructing multipurpose evacuation shelters in coastal districts like Chennai, Tiruvallur, Cuddalore and Nagapattinam at an estimate of Rs 345.00 crore.