Hyderabad: Parents appeal for FoB outside St. Ann’s school

Hyderabad: Parents and children from St. Ann’s School, Secunderabad, are having trouble crossing the road at its second gate, which opens up to a busy stretch on the main road. Although traffic personnel are deployed at the gate to assist, bikers and four-wheelers often don't pay heed and keep overtaking.

Adding to their woes, there has been no zebra crossing for the past two years, and even after the road was recarpeted a couple of months ago, the authorities have not bothered to paint the crossings. Students, on the other hand, are advised to cross using only zebra crossings, when there is none.

When our correspondent visited the site, vehicles kept barging through despite the traffic personnel's various attempts to stop them. A parent at the school said, "This is a daily situation and we have to wait till the traffic is halted, which takes a while. We have our children with us who keep running around and the situation certainly poses some amount of danger to them. If there was a foot-over bridge for us to cross the road, then life would be much easier."

A foot-over bridge was constructed in 2005 after a child, Rithika, met with an accident and died on the spot. However, the same was dismantled in 2015 for the construction of the Metro following which, parents and children have been left with no other alternative except to cross using the road.

Children from the higher school are planning to organize a signature campaign for a safer alternative or a foot-over bridge to cross the road. Some parents have given representations to the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation(GHMC) officials, too. However, the officials are still thinking about the matter as the height of the metro pillar is a challenge to construct a bridge.

In a similar situation, an FoB is being constructed at the Hyderabad Public School for students to cross the road.