It’s nearly eight months since the Rs 1.5 crore single-storey building of the Revenue Divisional Office (RDO) was completed by the Public Works Department (PWD), but there is no word yet on its inauguration.
The building is located at the intersection of School Road and Ambattur Industrial Estate Road. According to official sources, red tapism and procedural delays involving the shifting of the existing RDO office, near the TI Cycles in Ambattur, are causing the delay. .
As a result, every day, hundreds of people still travel to the existing RDO, near the TI Cycles company in Ambattur Old Town (OT) and have to contend with cramped seating arrangements, inadequate civic amenities including the absence of water taps, toilets and disabled-friendly ramps.
This RDO shares a common building with Ambattur taluk office. With the space crunch, the existing RDO office have to function with limited staff and can entertain only a handful of visitors every day.
The office provides various services including issuing of house site pattas, land assignments, transferring of pattas, issuing of pension under the Old Age Pension (OAP) scheme, PHP, DWP, DDWP and DALP schemes. The RDO office also issues heir, nativity and , community certificates. It is also involved in organising general elections.
“The existing RDO office is in a dilapidated condition with no basic facilities. Visitors, who come from faraway places, find it difficult to locate the office. In contrast, the new building is located on a busy stretch in Anna Nagar,” says K. Radha, a resident of Ayyapakkam, a village near Ambattur.
Located at the intersection of Padi Kuppam Road and School Road, the new revenue building takes up a built space of 6,000 sq ft and has a spacious parking area for visitors and RDO officials.
The new building comprises a large visitors waiting hall with a help desk, record room, store room, computer office, rest room with a capacity of 10 persons for the staff at the RDO, and separate toilets for men, women and the disabled on the ground floor of the building.
On the second floor are a spacious hall for hearing of visitors’ petitions by the RDO, a separate room for the RDO, a conference hall and a common office room for other officials.
Both floors of the building have adequate water facilities and a circulating area for visitors.
Special ramps have also been built for the disabled. In order to dispense his official duties and also make the office of the RDO available round-the-clock, especially during emergencies, a three-bedroom 2,000 sq.ft accommodation has also been built inside the new RDO building premises for the revenue divisional officer.
