LITTER ZONE

BANGALORE EAST ZONE 35 WARDS
LITTER ZONE
Garbage dumps plop in the middle of posh localities, and persistent stink, will have you covering your nose
Aarthi R | TNN

Bangalore: Garbage trucks litter this zone, any time during the day. But what stand out like eyesores are vacant sites and open drains loaded with garbage. While many new areas are coming up in a slapdash manner, without proper footpaths, other areas have long stretches of wide pavements, but which have been converted into public urinals!
Blame the BBMP or locals, but the truth is what stinks out there. Even the oldest areas of Namma Bengaluru are yet to learn the basic lessons of solid waste management.
A classic example is grand old Broadway, which has no path for pedestrians. Neither do several other areas, a majority of them in Shivajinagar.
The Colonel Hill Road is a short but important residential road that connects Cockburn Road leading to Cox Town via Miller’s Road, Queen’s Road and the Cantonment Railway Station. Located on this narrow stretch are private residences as well as three public institutions: Bangalore Friend-in-Need Society, a home for the aged; the Colonel Hill High School within the same compound, educating children from LKG to Standard X, and the Al-Ameen Kumbal Posh Kannada Higher Primary School at one end of the road.
This quiet, residential hub is now practically taken over by garage owners, who keep up a din with noisy repairs, and rusting hulks of cars are piled up all along the road and even the pavement, almost blocking the high school and seniors’ home. The road has almost turned into a garbage dump.
Nearby on Broadway Road is a slum near the Church of South India (CSI)Hospital. Despite more than one direct order from the chief minister and a former governor, relocation is yet to happen.
This slum is a perpetual fire hazard as the women do most of their cooking on the road and even beside inflammable materials, sometimes within their narrow, dingy sheds where the flames leap high. Their children run all over the road, and are a traffic hazard. Children and adults use the pavement right beside the hospital as their openair latrine and washing area.
Locals here also complain of women leasing out their babies and children for roadside begging, charging Rs 100 per day per child. The menfolk steal electricity, diverting the Bescom main line to light up their shacks. “The slum is also falsely registered as being located on Colonel Hill Road, when it is actually usurping public pavement space on H K P Broadway Road on both sides,’’ is what a few others have to say.
“It’s high time civic authorities such as BBMP, the police and Slum Clearance Board moved these slum-dwellers to some alternate accommodation and freed this neighbourhood,” said Vasumathi Krishnasami, a local.