BWSSB’s shoddy work causes nightmare

Bangalore: Serpentine Street in Richmond Town is a typical example of the shoddy work done by the BWSSB authority. The work was planned and executed haphazardly and in a manner as to cause residents living on either side of the road the maximum inconvenience

“I was not able to take my car out for months together as there was a heap of mud before my gate and I used my bike all the time, parking it on the road at night. It was one of the roads well laid by the corporation as it had a number of upscale apartments. It’s more like there’s a competition to dig up roads. Now, I hear that the other side of the road is going to be dug up,” said Ayub Khan, a resident of the area.

It started a couple of months ago when BWSSB workers started digging to clear clogged underground drainage lines about which they said they had received complaints.

They started digging the entire 500-metre stretch and turned it into a fiasco.

According to the residents, they were not able to take their vehicles out and it was very difficult to even walk on the road.

And then, once the work was done and the pipes covered, they started leaking again!

The job had to be done all over again, causing further problems and hassles for residents. Residents lived under high risk as no ambulance or fire truck would be able to reach their houses in case of an emergency.

“We are not against civic work, we appreciate it, but work needs to be carried out in an organised way so that it will not put the residents in the area to inconvenience,” said Vijay Kumar, a resident.

BWSSB is keen to complete underground drainage maintenance projects in several parts of the city, but is it doing so in a very shoddy manner and without a thought as to how it can reduce the inconvenience to residents.

Deccan Chronicle spoke to the corporator of Ward 117, Soumya Shivakumar, who accepted that the work was delayed because the order given for stoneware pipes did not reach the work site in time.

“There was an unexpected delay getting those bigger size drain pipes to the size as smaller ones are easily available. As the manhole near Rose Lane was getting clogged and flooded often, we had to replace the four-inch underground drainage pipes that were laid ages back.  These are being replaced by 12-inch pipes now,” Soumya Shivakumar said.

The corporator said that the work did not take months but only a fortnight, which is normal. She also denied that she got any complaints from the local residents about any inconvenience caused due to the civic work.