Hyderabad: Roads are supposed to be re-laid and repaired in Devinagar Colony but the work has been half done, though it has been four months since the work started. People living in the colony find it difficult to walk on the half dug roads with rubble piled on the pavements, and cars are locked up in garages because they can’t be moved out. Residents allege that the road work is very slow and sporadic.
This correspondent visited the colony and saw an auto driver leaving school children at the beginning of the street, because the road further on was too bumpy and would damage his vehicle. No form of public transport is willing to venture on these roads and senior citizens are compelled to walk on the rocky, uneven paths if they want to go out anywhere.
“In some of the streets, where the road is half laid, the earth has not been removed. Vexed neighbours are clearing it themselves. Mud has spread all over and creates dust pollution,” says Madhusudhan Rao, ex-president of the colony.
In the process of constructing the roads, some of the drainage lines and manholes have been broken, and are being reconstructed with money given by residents.
K.V.S. Sudhimathi, a retired Railway lecturer, pointed to the reconstructed manholes and said that the residents spent around Rs 10,000 to repair them.
Residents who may own cars cannot use them even in an emergency and have to walk to the main road to get an auto.
It is easy to see that even the newly laid roads are not constructed properly. The road is supposed to slope towards the manhole, but this is not so and residents complain that already the water has been stagnating in those areas.
When contacted, Anil Raj, executive engineer, Malkajgiri, Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation, (GHMC) said that “all works are in progress in all the lanes of Devinagar. The labourers who dig and who lay roads are different so there would be a gap period.”
Regarding the removal of the dug up earth, he said it would be immediately cleared in the next couple of days.
