Madurai: In Madurai city roads, in recent times, hotels, supermarkets, and textile shops are being started in large numbers like a swarm of termites, without any parking. Because municipal corporation town planning officials are showing negligence by not taking action against those establishments, traffic congestion is occurring on every street in the city.
According to the Tamil Nadu Combined Development and Building Rules, whenever a commercial building is constructed, and when residential buildings are converted for commercial use, a specified amount of space must be set aside as parking, in proportion to its area and the expected customer traffic.
In several cases, the court has also ordered that business establishments must provide parking facilities for their customers. The municipal corporation’s town planning department has been empowered to issue notices and seal buildings that are shown as parking spaces on the plan but are used for other purposes, or buildings that are operating illegally without parking facilities.
However, in the Madurai Corporation, officials in the town planning department are not interested in monitoring whether the prescribed amount of ‘parking’ space has been allocated in commercial buildings. As a result, on all city roads, in recent times, small and large hotels, textile shops, supermarkets, modern vegetable shops, bakery shops, and the like are being opened like mushrooms, without any restrictions and without parking facilities.
Customers who come here park their cars and two-wheelers on the road itself, go ‘shopping’, eat food, and then take their vehicles only after a long time.
On the roads, ordinary pushcart shops, flower shops, and idli stalls are being removed by municipal corporation urban planning officials and city traffic police, who, claiming they are obstructing traffic, compete with one another to threaten them and impose fines.
However, big business owners and those with political influence are openly running their businesses “strongly” without any parking, causing inconvenience to traffic and the public. Hotels, bakery shops, textile stores, and supermarkets are operating in large numbers on all the city’s major roads without parking facilities.
Regarding this, members of the public said, “If complaints are made to the municipal corporation’s public health department officials, they make excuses and avoid taking action. The city police and municipal corporation town planning officials do not take action against major commercial establishments, not even by mistake. Many business establishments obtain permission from the municipal corporation’s town planning department by showing, in name only, parking spaces near their premises or underground buildings as ‘parking.’ The town planning department officials stop with granting them permission; they do not monitor violations or take action,” they said.
In this regard, several attempts were made to contact Municipal Corporation Town Planning Officer Murali for comment, but he did not answer the call.