Chennai: Apart from adequate fund allocation, the Public Library in Pattabiram has functions from Ramshack, a rental premise for almost half a decade.
The Estmana Library was established on the Thanurai Government Middle School campus for more than 40 years.
Without proper care, old buildings began to fall.
Six years ago, the library shifted to the temporary location – the ground floor of the shopping complex around it.
The small space allocated for the library can hardly accommodate 6,000 books, while thousands of other books are now stocked in schools and private residences.
The library has more than 1,000 registered members, which is now forced to visit the library in other areas.
In addition to members, the library is very helpful for civil service candidates from the western periphery because they have easy access to preparatory materials for competitive exams.
Most of them have to travel from the district to Chennai to find reference books, said residents from Avadi.
To end this, the Tutoruvallur District Library Office in July 2017 gave sanctions ₹ 19.8 lakh to build a new and permanent building for the branch library.
Local authorities identified space in the school to build a library building.
But because of the opposition from the residents, the plan was detained and the agreed amount lies at this time.
“We have tried for years to find alternative sites.
But there is no progress,” said a senior district library official.
Gopalakrishnan, who has a shopping complex where the library is currently functioning, said the district authorities will not act to get a new library building.
T Sadagopan, a resident activist from Avadi, said, “It is the task of collecting districts to hold meetings with voluntary consumer organizations once in three months to discuss the issue.
But there was no such meeting that occurred in Thiruvallur for more than three years.”