Karnataka

the residents

Vishnu

The levelling

Tired of listening to ‘repeated promises and lies of the corporator’, residents bring out shovels and pick axes to make their road motorableWhen most people would have had a long lie-in on account of the mid-week holiday on November 1st due toRajyotsava, there was no time for sloth forof Thubarahalli. On the morning of November 1, 75 residents of the area, including the elderly, came together to level the road from UKN Esperanza apartments totemple, that has been left unrepaired for some years now. They used their own gardening equipment and worked for two hours to level the road and made it motorable.This move came after the residents were tired of empty promises from authorities for two years. Residents told Bangalore Mirror that the road is dug up every now and then due to Cauvery work or gas pipeline work and is left unrepaired. At times, the residents are trapped in their homes for weeks together because of the digging work after which the road is never re-laid. When it rains, the situation worsens as the kutcha road fills up with puddles.Debjani Krishnan, a resident of Thubarahalli and member of UKN Esperanza Residents group, says, “There are residents who have been living here since eight to nine years and they too say that the roads have remained in poor condition in this area. I moved here two years back and have been noticing that digging constantly goes on and the roads are left unrepaired.”The digging happens over many days, leaving only one road connecting the residents to the main road, which is neither motorable nor walkable. The most recent round of digging started ten days ago. People who need to take their cars to work are forced to use an alternate route which is through someone’s property and it is just a mud path.Children suffer as well as school buses refuse to come into the area now, thanks to the dug up roads. As a result, many children go walking on the pothole-filled roads to reach their bus stop early in the morning. Says Krishnan, “Even when the road work is over, and despite several follow ups, the contractor neither levels the road nor cleans up the debris, which is piled up in small hillocks. The stretch from the temple to the main road, which is full of potholes and craters, is yet to be fixed. Corporator Shewtha Vijaykumar promised us late last night that she will get the contractor to complete the work on that stretch. Otherwise, the weekend will be spent doing road labour.”Vijay Kumar, the corporator’s husband, said, “70 to 80% of the work has been completed. The remaining 20% repair work is getting delayed as there are some land litigation issues on that stretch, going on in the court. The roads were dug up due to sanitary, Cauvery and gas pipeline work. It kept on getting delayed as earlier we did not get the funds, and when we got the funds, the tender was rejected due to some GST issues. This time, it will be done in a week or so.We had made a new road two years ago. But four months ago, the road was dug up to complete sanitary work. If we level and repair the road now, the tankers will come for the sanitary work and damage the road wagain. The residents will then say that the road that was recently constructed has been damaged within a month.will be done in a week and the asphalting will be done in a month or two as we have not yet got the funds for asphalting the roads.” He adds, “There was no Cauvery or gas pipeline in the area since 15 years. We have been working on it since our election and will complete the work soon.” However, residents differ and say that they have been hearing the same promises for two years now.