Come rain and Bangalore roads become a pain!

Come rain and Bangalore roads become a pain!
The Times of India

Bangalore: The very first spell of 59.2mm rain and city roads have been battered. The first layer of asphalting has virtually been peeled off. Is this a proof of quality of work done?

Pradeep N., a software engineer living in Murugeshpalya, came back after working for eight years in the US. Today, he says the pain of travelling on city roads has taken away the joy of having come back to India.

Murugeshpalya, barely 10 minutes from Texas Instruments, one of the first MNC tech companies to set up shop here, looks very ‘un’-hightech at the moment.

It is full of potholes, and slush, tarred stretches have been worn down by the past week’s incessant rain. To make matters worse, some parts have even been dug up and cordoned off. Unfortunately, Murugeshpalya is not an exception. Practically all of Bangalore’s roads, even those that connect to the arterial Mahatma Gandhi Road, are in same condition. And the monsoon has not even begun yet.

Commuting has become a back-breaking experience. Pradeep, for one, wonders why the (Bangalre City Corporation (BCC) does not do a proper job when laying roads for the first time. “Then these sort of patches or potholes will not form.”

The BCC has come in for much flak for the condition of roads. Last month, a report said there is no maintenance at all on the 1,230 km stretch that the BCC outsourced to private contractors in November 2003. The contractors were given a three-year Rs 16-crore contract to keep roads “pot-hole free’’. Yet, today, even corporators in the BCC Council complain that nothing is being done, that there are more potholes than ever before.

Pre-monsoon steps: Many citizens said annual maintenance is something BCC utterly fails to do. “Every year, the rains totally destroy our roads.’’

Incidentally, two months ago, Lok Ayukta Venkatachala had exposed the sub-standard quality of work by testing the roads in some areas. The tar and stone mixture layer was found to be less than the prescribed 7 mm.