Kids brave trucks, sand to get to school

IN HARM’S WAY
V Ayyappan TNN

Mar 18, 2009
Chennai: Fourteen-year-old Guru risks his life every day while going to school — a 15-minute walk from his house. On his way to the Akshara Matriculation School at Raj Nagar in Okkiyam Thoraipakkam, he has to dodge several sand-laden trucks that roar down a battered road, kicking up a dust storm. Similar is the plight of more than 500 students of the school and also 200 other children of the Vijay Nursery School in the same locality. The children start their day at school by wiping off layers of dust from their desks and benches — residue of the sand and mud spilt by the never-ending convoy of trucks that transport soil round-the-clock to a landfill being prepared to build multi-storey tenements by the TN Slum Cl

earance Board (TNSCB) to relocate encroachers evicted from the city, at nearby Kannagi Nagar. Parthasarathy, a student, said: “Look around and you see only dust everywhere. It makes breathing difficult. The road is damaged at several places as the trucks plough through them.” The traffic is so high that more than 10 trucks can be spotted passing by in either direction near the school within a span of five minutes during peak hours. “Majority of the children who study here belong to illiterate and poor families and they walk down to the school. The trucks make walking dangerous and messy,” said Nalini Unni, correspondent, Akshara Matriculation School, who has sent several representations that were ignored by the local body representatives and police. “They should at least stop movement of trucks during peak hours when children are using the road. There are alternative routes — the road that passes by Jain College, the road through Neelankarai and also the OMR-New Mahabalipuram link road to reach Kannagi Nagar,” she said. In 2002, the school had got a temporary reprieve from the Madras high court which passed an order banning movement of trucks from 8am to 1pm on days when examinations were being held. Thoraipakkam panchayat president Ekambaram said “We have requested the slum clearance board not to build the houses. There is also a court order that prohibits contruction of buildings by the board in the area. But, the works continue.” Denying that there was any court order that banned construction of houses, TNSCB managing director T K Ramachandran said, “The court order was conditional and pertained to the enviironment aspect of a small patch of land in the area. We are trying to control movement of trucks through the area.”