Mad monsoon recedes, roads yet to receive facelift

Mad monsoon recedes, roads yet to receive facelift
New Indian Express

BANGALORE: The exceptional monsoon that stripped Bangalore roads and exposed the system’s inability to cope with disaster has calmed. But the civic agencies have not woken up to the need to repair roads.

The Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BMP) has been promising to take up works after the monsoon, but hardly any work has started so far, though the Chief Minister made a promise that the roads would be repaired on a war footing.

Roads in central business districts and arterial and subarterial roads are still in a state of disrepair. Road junctions too have turned into insurmountable blocks with more potholes than the motorists can negotiate.

The Trinity junction and the Cauvery junction are just two examples. The BMP had submitted to the Government that roads stretching to 700 km had been washed away in the mad monsoon.

It placed an indent for Rs 400 crore to carry out repairs. This is apart from the Rs 130 crore project to develop roads under World Bank funding and over Rs 50 crore allotted to the wards from the BMP budget.

To supplement this, a special fund of Rs 15 crore is available under the Mayor’s grants. But all this does not mean anything to the roads, as the money is yet to fall into the account of the BMP.

Except for Rs 10 crore out of Rs 30 crore assured by the State government during the rain devastation, the civic body has received nothing, civic authorities said. Even the special finance commission grants are still awaited.

The councillors are too busy wooing outgoing Mayor R Narayanaswamy for higher funding under mayoral grants to take a look at pathetic roads. On Tuesday, BMP said that the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, a subsidiary of the World Bank, had sanctioned Rs 140 crore for its road-strengthening project.

But, the city is yet to see the fruits.