Huge heaps of garbage lying on the roadside and the vacant plots of Kodeeswaran Nagar and its burning in an unsafe manner at the spot itself are causing serious health hazards to the residents for the past several weeks. The very birth of Kodeeswaran Nagar and Vedhathri Nagar that have come up right on the paddy fields triggered a series of controversies a decade ago. When this layout was allegedly promoted without formal approval from the Corporation and the town planning authority, the urban civic body cautioned the public against buying housing plots in the newly promoted layout. The Corporation administration also made it clear that it might not be possible for the civic body to provide basic infrastructure like drainage channels, underground drainage, drinking water, roads etc. since it was an unapproved layout. Similarly, the Pettai Rural panchayat, under which a few streets of these two colonies fall, also erected a board there warning the public against buying housing plots there. However, both Kodeeswaran Nagar and Vedhathri Nagar became most sought-after places for the middle income group who have constructed around 1,000 houses there, but their woes continue as there is no basic infrastructure. As the 11th Cross Street of Kodeeswaran Nagar is located right on the border between the Tirunelveli Corporation and Pettai Rural panchayat and this area falls under the rural local body, garbage cleaning in this region remains a problem always to cause untold hardship to the middle class residents of this area. When complaints from the residents start pouring in on mounting garbage, the panchayat would send a few sanitary workers to remove the refuse. Burnt down “Instead of removing the garbage, they used to collect and heap the waste either on a vacant plot or on the roadside and incinerate it in an unsafe manner that causes more trouble to the residents, especially for the elders living with a range of ailments. The fumes emanating from the burning plastic waste cause respiratory trouble to my children and my aged father, who had to be rushed to the hospital once due to this problem,” said S. Gowsalya, one of the residents. When the residents sent SOS to the Pettai Rural panchayat officials and Collector M. Karunakaran during the weekly grievance day meet on a few occasions, no action has been taken so far and the situation continues to remain the same. The ultimate victims to this official apathy are the children and the aged, the affected people say. Neither the Corporation nor the Pettai Rural panchayat officials are could intervene in the living conditions at Kodeeswaran Nagar as they say that they could not do anything in an unapproved layout. “What we’re doing there now is only based on humanitarian grounds… Anyway we’ll look into this issue,” said a rural development department official on Tuesday.