Say residents as officials look the other way and residents bear the brunt
By Sindhu MR
Senior citizen MR Krishnamurthy has a pressing question: “When will they permanently fix the mess?” The resident of Sector 7 is pointing to the mess on 18th Cross off 14th Main Road. Not only is the road non-motorable, it becomes a cesspool of sewage as stormwater drain overflows on to the road and inside his house when it rains rhinos. Pointing at the cross road next to his house, he says, “These roads have not been tarred for over ten years now.” Two-time MLA Satish Reddy has many questions to answer for. In the election year, the residents contend that he has done nothing for the inhabitants of Sector 3 who raised the issue of flooding more than a year ago. “He promises much but delivers nothing” is the common refrain among residents.
BBMP Joint Commissioner Veerabhadraswamy and incharge executive engineer Muralidhar are turning a blind eye to the proceedings. BBMP Commissioner Manjunatha Prasad and city development minister KJ George visited the flooded areas more than a month ago, but nothing is happening at a breakneck speed to fix the issues that plague the low-lying areas of HSR Layout. The biggest casualty of incessant rains and flooding are the roads. Some of the roads can literally break your back. Supplement that with record rainfall and you have the best recipe to create a pothole. The BBMP workers will swing by and patch up the area that will go back to square one within a month’s time. Such is the shoddy work that the BBMP is only making promises that it cannot deliver.
When much pressure was put on them to make the contractors responsible for the maintenance of roads, the BBMP released the names and numbers of contractors in-charge of the roads. One look at the list and we realised that only the major roads in HSR were covered. If you search for ‘HSR Layout’, most of the cross roads and interior roads are not even on the BBMP’s radar… only the usual suspects were there: 27th Main, 24th Main, 19th Cross, 14th Main, 22nd Cross and so on. And these are usually roads that are re-tarred even if they suffer no damages whereas the interior roads are left unattended for several years. Such is the callousness with which the agencies and the netas function. Says resident Kamesh R: “Why should we contact the contractors? It’s not our job. On what basis is the BBMP collecting taxes? They are just trying to pass the buck and save themselves from taking up their responsibility.”
Who will bell this pothole mafia? While the question hangs in the air, one cannot disagree when resident Lalithamba says, ‘HSR is full of pot roads’.
