TN SEZs facing infrastructure hurdle

ARUN S
Posted online: Wednesday, November 22, 2006 at 0041 hours IST

NEW DELHI, NOV 21: Tamil Nadu might have got a good share of Special
Economic Zones (SEZs), but the state is still struggling to provide
quality infrastructure in the areas leading to SEZs.
Roads leading to SEZs like Nokia, Flextronics, ETL are barely motorable.
On the other hand, all these sector-specific SEZs are hardly making any
effort to build social infrastructure like housing and other amenities.

Of the 237 formally approved SEZs across the country, 25 are from Tamil
Nadu. Among the 166 SEZs, which have got in-principle approvals, 12 are
from the state. Majority of these SEZs are situated in and around Chennai.

Said Jukka Lehtela, director, India operations, Nokia India Pvt Ltd, a
company developing the 85-hectare telecom and IT hardware SEZ: “When our
total number of employees hit the 20,000-mark soon, given the current
state of roads, one can see a 5 km-long queue of buses. The highway
cannot take that kind of a traffic. We want the government to start a
dedicated railway line to our SEZ. We are even willing to pay more than
the normal fare”. But on the social infrastructure inside the SEZ,
Lehtela said, “We would like others to develop that as it is not our
forte”.

Flextronics’ GM and director (India operations) A Gururaj, said: “This
area, housing Nokia and Flextronics SEZ, will soon become a telecom hub.
Besides, we will soon have over 5,000 employees. We will have to push
the government harder for better roads and railways”. Flextronics,
developing the 101.2 hectare SEZ, is also waiting for experts to handle
their social infrastructure.

About 45,000 people are expected to work in the 10.57 hectare IT/ITES
SEZ, being developed by ETL Infrastructure Services Ltd. But the SEZ is
situated at a site where there is large-scale dumping. The state
government officials, who have so far not done anything about it, said
they are looking at shifting the waste to four different sites. On the
social infrastructure, ETL said they would rather leave that to real
estate developers.

State government officials, however, said they were planning to complete
the IT corridor–a world-class six-lane road and a few other roads to
connect these SEZs.

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