Palike asphalts road, water board digs it up to lay pipes

Palike asphalts road, water board digs it up to lay pipes
Bangalore, May 26, DHNS:

Ramanjaneya Road at Hanumanthnagar on Tuesday was like a cloth being darned from one side and torn from the other.

The Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) had asphalted a stretch of Ramanjaneya Road and had just about begun work on the part towards Srinagar Circle on Tuesday, when the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) dug up the freshly tarred part.
The reason the water board officials gave was that sewage lines had begun to leak in the area and some pipes had to be replaced.

For the local residents, the road laying had come as a relief from hours of tortuous traffic. The pot-holed road would turn a bottleneck during peak hours, and motoring and walking on it was almost dangerous. However, their relief was shortlived, when on Tuesday morning they found the water board workers digging up the newly laid road. The BWSSB work later stalled the second phase of road laying.

When contacted by Deccan Herald, BWSSB sources said sewage lines were being relaid, as local MLA Ravi Subramanya had received complaints of pipe leakages from the residents. “On insistence of the MLA, we had taken up the work. In fact, our local engineers and the MLA have asked the contractor not to finish the asphalting exercise till this work is completed,” said a BWSSB source. However, when BBMP (South) Chief Engineer Ananthswamy was asked about the BWSSB work, he denied any knowledge of it.

The mess-up comes after a recent meeting between the BBMP and the BWSSB officials over the digging up of roads by BWSSB without prior permission. In the meeting, directions were given to the engineers of the Sewerage Board to inform BBMP officials before they undertake any digging of road for laying or replacing pipes.

However, the directions seem to have fallen on deaf ears. “We are tired of telling them over and over again. We have asked them time and again to inform us before they dig up the streets in Bangalore,” a Palike official said.