Shoddy works make city road a hellhole

By our Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI, March 3: The Beltola-Bhetapara road in the city has been a hell of a mess for the past three/four days. Lack of coordition among the departments/agencies concerned has made the situation messy. The residents in the area have been having a harrowing time for no fault of theirs.

The road is a busy one with most of school buses, other vehicles, e-rickshaws, rickshaws etc., using it. This is not a one-way road. For the past few days what is seen on the road makes one to rack his/her brains as to why the departments concerned are out to make the road a hellhole. While along one side of the road a deep drain has been dug so as to lay cables, along the other GMC workers have piled up muddy debris taken out from the choked drains. And both the works are shoddy.

As though to make the situation worse, the workers who laid cables washed their hands of the job just by protecting their installations with some box-like structures. They have left even the soil dug out by them on the road. This is not all. At some places along the road around two-foot-long pieces of cables stick out like sore thumbs, preventing free flow of vehicles.

Along the other side of the road, the muddy debris piled up by the GMC stinks. With vehicles plying over it the entire road has turned muddy leading to traffic jams every now and then. The road is seen teeming with honking cars, rickshaws, e-rickshaws and other vehicles – stranded in massive traffic jams. According to the standing rules, the muddy debris being piled up by the GMC has to be taken away within 72 hours. Such a time is given so as to let water from the muddy garbage being soaked. However, the debris on the road has been lying there for the past three/four days.

What baffles one is – there is no higher-up to look after the works being done by the GMC workers and those laying cables, as though they have been given freehand to do that sort of works shoddily.

This is not the first such case in Guwahati that witnesses such shoddy works here and there every now and then. What leads to such a situation? A glaring reason behind this is lack of coordition among the departments and agencies that have to do certain works in the city. They are GMC, GMDA, GDD, PWD, PHE, Water Supply and the like. They have their own schedules for doing such works without coordition with other departments and agencies. Such works – laying cables and GMC cleaning the drain – should have been at different times and under the supervision of higher-ups of both the agencies. When a small road like Beltola-Bhetapara road is occupied by a drain for laying cables along one aside and muddy debris along the other, the passage of the road becomes very rrow. Had there been coordition between the two departments or agencies the current problem afflicting the people residing in the vicinity of the road could have been avoided. Supervision by higher-ups of the two departments could have avoided the shoddiness in both the works. Does not the situation demand a separate department or agency to ensure better coordition among various departments, at least for Guwahati? The authority concerned needs to rack his brains!