Chennai: Emotional slum and pavement dwellers poured out their angst at what they thought was the authorities’ high-handedness in shifting them out to tenements out of the city while the ‘affluent’ encroachers stayed put.
At a public hearing held Thursday organised by the Pennurimai Iyakkam, National Alliance for People’s Movement and Unorganised Workers’ Federation, on the topic ‘Impact of flood on Chennai slum and pavement dwellers’, slum dwellers pointed out livelihood as a major reason why the state should not be evicting them.
Dilliamma, a resident of Pandiyan street in Dr Radhakrisnan Puram near Greenways Road, said that slum dwellers there were threatened by authorities.
Ezhumalai of Mandapam street near Kottur (located behind CLRI campus), complained that the government was looking to shift the residents despite a 1972 G.O. declaring the space exclusive for SC/ST families.
Vetrivel of Mannar Sera Perumal Nagar near Maduravoyal said that his livelihood will be destroyed, if he was ‘thrown 60 km away’.
