BENGALURU: Residents of areas surrounding the ECC Road in Whitefield dread getting their cars out to go to work everyday. The reason — crater-sized ditches dug up everywhere on the road. The busy main road connects Whitefield to G R Tech Park and ITPL Outer Circle.
The three kilometre stretch also houses two schools and hence is packed with schoolchildren.
"Private telecom operators have dug up pits to lay OFC cables and recently BWSSB also dug up the road to lay a sewage line. They keep digging the road repeatedly, without any legal permit," says Sanjeev Jha, a resident.
The route is also used by children attending The Deens Academy and The Indus Early Learning Centre.
"Recently an empty school bus was stuck in one of the pits. What if someday the bus is full of children? Will the authorities open their eyes then?" asks Narayan, a worried resident.
Residents have also formed ECC Road Residents Forum and have approached the authorities with their issues.
"We have been facing this problem since many months now. There is no development on the road and the frequent rains add to the mess," says Soumya Balaji, a resident.
"The potholes and pits are death traps when it rains. You can’t see them even when you are walking and there have been so many incidents where children have nearly fallen into them,” she explains.
While the residents continue to suffer, the BBMP and BWSSB are playing the blame game.
BWSSB assistant executive engineer Srinvas said that the road lacks a side drain which causes water logging during rainfall.
Srinivas added, “The BBMP needs to build the drains which will ensure that water flows easily.”
When asked why the BWSSB had not filled the open trenches, he said he was unaware of the situation.
“I will conduct an inspection and see what can be done,” he said. BBMP that has a separate cell for laying optical fibre cables (OFC), said that they only dealt with the paper work.
Narsimhamurthy, executive engineer, OFC Cell, said, “We only give permission to companies to lay the cables. The monitoring of the same is done by the ward engineers or the local corporators. We are not responsible if the companies don’t fill up the pits. What can we do in such matters?”