The work for tar road began, in December 2009. As part of that, the work for drains along the road, though started from scratch, has been going on in rounds, changing the course of the drain thrice. The work came to a halt with out proper cover for drains. Lack of proper planning before starting the work was quite apparent.

A short drain running across of the road, opened for clearing the blockage because of debris and wasn’t covered since then, has been big trouble for all the passing vehicles, especially four wheelers, and pedestrians when it rains, at nights, and during power cuts.

For the road and drain work along the road for the entire lane, BBMP is responsible. We were told it was the responsibility of Assistant Executive Engineer, Horamavu sub-division.

We (Krishna Yenuga and Vishwas Pai) decided to take the matter to the notice of BBMP along with the other relevant concerns by seeking the support of residents of the locality through a signature campaign, started on 20/8/2010. We got 22 signatures from residents of independent houses and 24 signatures from the residents of an apartment in the locality, 46 in total.

Drainage that took ten months to close. Pic: Kris Yenuga

The signature campaign asked BBMP to act on the problem. The residents also demanded garbage pickup and control of stray dogs in the area.

Responses from BBMP:

1) About the tar road, drains along the road, and drain covers:

The Complaint was submitted to BBMP, Ramamurthy Nagar office on 23/9/2010. We had a talk with engineer Srinivas regarding the problems, only to learn that there was a court case going on between a owner of some vacant plots in that lane and BBMP, whose matter was that the road was illegally running through his vacant plot(s), not sure whether partially or fully. The engineer’s response was BBMP could not proceed with the tar roadwork until court case wouldn’t be resolved.

All we could do was to make a request to do something about open drain segment running across the street, cause of the highest priority trouble for the residents.

The drain cover work was completed, about a month later by the builder. He hadn’t taken any interest in the matter during previous nine months.

BBMP’s acknowledgement receipt for the complaint. Pic: Kris Yenuga

2) About Garbage Pickup

BBMP started sending an additional garbage pickup vehicle to cover the second portion of the lane blocked by open drain. There has been noticeable improvement in regularity of garbage pick up after the complaint. BBMP did a great job in this regard.

When the stink and mosquitoes become unbearable, we would call health inspector to co-ordinate with cleaning mestri of this area to pick up the garbage from vacant sites. This is in addition to alternate day garbage pick-ups by two vehicles.

3) About Stray dogs

We got the contact number of a veterinarian, Sahadev form Health Inspector Viswanath to whom we could directly report about stray dogs. In fact the vet said he would arrange for a dog-pickup vehicle, and about sterilization of the dogs and then leaving them back in the same area, shared the truck driver number and scheduled time. But nothing in action happened even after two months.

On a repeated appeal to Health Inspector Viswanath, we were told to report to BBMP complaint cell over phone. Registered a complaint (No.49292 on 18/11/2010) and waiting for some action on it.

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