If residents of Easwardass Street in Triplicane had not put out a hand in an emphatic gesture of protest when a road-relaying work was initiated by Greater Chennai Corporation, they would have spent the ensuing months in dread of the upcoming North East Monsoon. In fact, they would be tasting the unsavoury fruit of that inaction much earlier if Chennai’s secondary monsoon, the South West Monsoon engineered a cloudburst.

Fortunately, this sad state of affairs is not going to pan out. There was no inaction. The hands had gone up in protest, politely but firmly.

Easwardass Street residents stopped an exercise by Zone 9 of GCC to lay a layer of interlocking cement bricks over a pre-existing cement layer on their street. They brought the work to a halt, raising the issue of lack of stormwater drainage. Cemented years ago, the street could have that layer interlocking cement bricks only as a replacement for the cement layer and not as an addition to it. Already lacking an effective water channel to drain water, this would have further “sealed” the street turning it into a trough for rainwater.

Following pressure from residents, Zone 9 GCC authorities called off the work and began removing the bricks that had already been laid. The revised plan is to first strip away the existing cemented layer and then relay the road with interlocking bricks, this time with proper drainage provisions.

Madhavan, a retired government employee and resident, explained that the road is very narrow and had already been raised on account of a cement layer laid earlier, leaving no slope or channel for rainwater to drain.

“Every time it rains, the water does not drain; it just sits and slowly evaporates, taking days to disappear,” he says.

He adds that the fresh attempt to lay interlocking cement bricks without addressing the drainage issue was even more frustrating. After he and a few other residents formally raised their concerns, an inspection was carried out, the paving work stopped, and the authorities began removing the newly laid blocks.

Published - August 08, 2026 05:13 pm IST