Chennai corporation to impose Rs five lakh fine for letting sewage into stormwater drain

New Indian Express

a day ago

CHENNAI: The corporation council adopted a resolution on Monday increasing the penalty for illegal sewage connections to stormwater drains or for discharging sewage waste onto the streets to a maximum of Rs 5 lakh, depending on the type of the building. The maximum penalty was earlier Rs 2 lakh.
Following a direction from the Madras High Court to implement penalties for illegal sewage connections into stormwater drains in 2017, the GCC had fixed penalties at Rs 5,000 to Rs 10,000 for ordinary buildings, Rs 25,000 to Rs 50,000 for ordinary commercial buildings, and Rs 1 lakh to Rs 2 lakh for multi-storey buildings.
The corporation has now proposed to increase this as Rs 10,000 to Rs 25,000 for ordinary buildings, Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh for ordinary commercial buildings, and Rs 2 lakh to Rs 5 lakh for multi-storey buildings. This is as per Section 161 of the Tamil Nadu Urban Local Bodies Act 1998, said the resolution, which prohibits any individual from discharging refuse, trade effluents or waste into water sources or drains maintained by the municipal corporations.
As part of the civic body's initiatives to eliminate manual desilting of stormwater drains, the council also adopted a resolution to hire a private contractor, M/s Sai Tube Well company, to clean the stormwater drains across the city using machines having a suction capacity of 4,000 m3/hour.
The firm will also be responsible henceforth to transport the silt collected every 25 km to the dump yards using dumpers. In addition, three vehicle-mounted high-capacity suction-cum-jetting machines with a recylcing facility will be procured by the corporation at a cost of Rs 13.95 crore to be deployed in each of the three regions of the city corporation for cleaning silt catch pits in SWDs.
During the question hour, Ward 97 Councillor Latha raised concerns over tenders being awarded to the same private contractor for work across the city, stating that it was resulting in delayed progress of work, especially desilting of stormwater drains. She urged the civic body to issue tenders to other contractors ward-wise to ensure that the work is completed on time and every qualified contractor from all classes received equal opportunity.