BENGALURU: A major water supply project has forced residents on a street in Whitefield to negotiate a barely motorable road for over three months, with no solution in sight. The road in question is almost a kilometre stretch of the Sanvi Sankalpam Main Road near Immadihalli Main Road in Whitefield. The road was dug up to lay pipelines for the Rs 1,400 crore KC Valley project, which is designed to collect sewage water from the Koramangala and Challagatta valleys in the city, and transport it to tanks in Kolar district.
The pipeline was laid here to transport water from Varthur lake. The project is set to be inaugurated by Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy soon.
Johnson Thomas, a resident of one of the apartments on the street, said after the KC valley project work, workers left without relaying the soil properly. “When the rains started, the entire road sort of caved in. Work to restore it is going on, but there is no progress and it is becoming dangerous for us to navigate the road,” he said.In a post about the road’s condition on Facebook, a resident has commented that the road also lacks streetlights. “A lot of people who reside on the road and are dependent on it for day to day commuting are suffering due to delay in completion of work,” states another post.
M Suresh, Junior Engineer of Hagadur ward, in which the apartments lie, said the project work was finished a month ago, after which work done to restore the road was delayed.“Last week, Mahadevpura MLA Arvind Limbavali called a meeting with officials concerned regarding restoration of the road, who promised to finish it on war footing,” he said. Suresh said it was possible to restore the road during the monsoon.
An Assistant Engineer who worked for the KC Valley project, however, said work could be completed only after regular rainfall stopped. He said workers were working continuously to drain out water that got filled on the road due to the rains. “Even though today is a Sunday, we are working on the road,” he said. He added that the time taken to restore the road would depend on the rains.