BENGALURU: As accidents have been taking place frequently on Balagere Road due to its pathetic state, more than 500 residents of Balagere took to the streets to protest on Sunday.
Young, middle-aged, and senior citizens joined the protest. Their placards read: “How many more have to die and suffer?”, “Repair roads or give us a speed boat”, “Proper roads-Good Health”, and “Widen the roads and underpass.. End our suffering”, in order to draw the attention of civic authorities demanding for better civic infrastructure in their locality.
One of the protesters, Shwetha S from Panathur, said, “Its been more than two years and we have been suffering because these roads are in a pathetic state. The entire stretch is muddy as it’s not tarred. The entire stretch gets flooded when it rains and becomes slippery. It is more like a death trap.”
Another resident, Deepak Sharma, said the roads are very narrow which creates traffic congestion. “Every morning there are huge traffic bottlenecks. We have a road under the bridge on the Panatur-Balegere Main Road which is also narrow. Due to this, all of us are stuck there for long. We pay taxes but don’t even get good amenities. We need justice,” he said.
Another resident said patch work was done for a part of the roads, but it did not even sustain for two days.
Corporator of Ward 149 Pushpa Manjunath said, “The Bangalore Water Supply Sewerage board (BWSSB) is laying Cauvery pipelines and Under Ground Drainage (UGD) lines due to which road works are taking time. I have instructed them to finish the work immediately. Meanwhile, restoration work has already started in parts where the work is finished.”
