BENGALURU: For 61-year-old Mohammed Shafi, stepping out of his house these days is, in his own words, almost a trek. That is because the road that leads up to his house is a treacherous one, filled with mud and stones.
“There was only mud till four days ago. When it rained, it became all slushy and all the residents collected stones and bricks from a plot nearby and placed them (on the road) to make it walkable,” he says.
This is one of the many such roads in HBR Layout, near Nagawara traffic signal. The main access road to the layout has been cordoned off for maintenance work. “They are laying sewage pipes and the work has been going on for six months,” says Dilipkumar Churiwal, a resident. “When it rains, you can’t see where the next ditch or pothole is. And many bikes have got stuck in them,” he says.
Its proximity to Manyata Tech Park has made HBR Layout home to many techies who work odd hours. “There have been several incidents of chain snatching. Women are followed often, so much so that our children now refuse to walk alone on the streets after dark,” says Jyoti Suresh, another resident.
Paying No Heed
The residents say requests to install more streetlights have yielded no results.
“The interior roads don’t have any streetlights, making them perfect spots for crime. There are electrical poles and even connection for streetlights but none of them work. That’s how responsible the authorities are,” says Anupama Rao, a resident.
All in all, the layout has around 4,000 residents. And with the main road closed, these residents have to use the alternative entry route, which lies next to a graveyard.
“We don’t have a problem with the graveyard but they are slowly encroaching upon the road. Last week, a body was buried in the middle of the road. How are we to travel on such roads?” asks Guruprasad, a resident.
But when Express contacted the area councillor Govindraju on Thursday, he denied that HBR Layout was in such poor condition. “The work on the main road is only a month old. The layout is new and has new roads,” he said.