Chennai: Under the scorching sun, people usually try to find some shade under a canopy of trees. But with roads increasingly losing their tree cover to wayside development, government authorities are resorting to a different kind of green to give people some respite from the heat.
The Puducherry government Thursday installed green cloth shades at traffic signals and junctions to help the public beat the heat this summer.
The initiative was implemented following the advice of Public Works Department (PWD) minister K. Lakshminarayanan and has received accolades from local residents and netizens alike.
Videos of bikers and motorists waiting at traffic signals under the green shade on the roads in Puducherry have been shared widely on social media.
Notably, a day after the Puducherry government’s move, green net shades were installed at traffic signals in Coimbatore in neighbouring Tamil Nadu.
Green shades have also been used at traffic signals by the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation in parts of Odisha to beat the heat this summer. The initiative was first implemented in Nagpur, Maharashtra, in 2016.
Speaking to ThePrint, Lakshminarayanan said the people themselves had for several years erected cloth shades on roads in the summer in Puducherry, but the government took up the initiative this year.
“Erection of the green shades had led to fights in areas in the past and people were also doing it for political mileage. This also led to competition over the same thing,” he said.
The minister said the authorities were also facing issues while giving permission to put up the green shades as the Lok Sabha elections were on.
“So, I asked the collector to permit the PWD to do the job. Because the roads are ours. It’s better than permitting someone else. And sometimes they (the others erecting the green shades) damage the roads,” he said, adding that in the previous summer, one such shade had broken off and fallen on a commuter’s head.
According to Lakshminarayanan, the cost of implementation was minimal and the initiative had been welcomed by all. He said the cloth shades, set up using sticks, would stay intact for at least a month and the PWD would change them if damaged.
The India Meteorological Department has said hot and humid weather will be observed in Puducherry and Tamil Nadu till 6 May. Puducherry recorded a maximum temperature of 39 degrees Celsius Friday.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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