BENGALURU: With the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) blaming rains for not being able to fix pothole-ridden roads in the city, many ‘Pothole Rajas’ have come to the rescue, filling several potholes in the city.
Pothole Rajas is an NGO that ropes in citizens, who on being disappointed by the lackadaisical approach of the civic authorities in mending roads, do the job themselves. "Pothole Rajas and Ranis are enabling citizens and organisations to take ‘law into their own hands’, and repair potholes on the roads. Any citizen can come forward and fill up a pothole," said Sourabh Kumar, Chief Operating Officer of the NGO.
On Sunday 15 volunteers headed to Iblur and fixed potholes from Iblur to HSR Layout BDA complex, covering a stretch of about four km, and fixed 30 potholes in three hours. “On our complaint number we receive about six to ten complaints every day. We figured that a majority of the complaints were from Iblur. We did a survey on the spot and found the stretch was really bad and decided to have it fixed”, added Kumar.
It was further pointed out that Pothole Rajas use eco-friendly methods. “There is no environment pollution caused during the process of manufacturing the raw material. Besides, we use weather-proof pothole fixing solution. The average time taken to fix a pothole is ten minutes and the cost of fixing one pothole of 50 mm depth is Rs 2,500,” he added.
A resident from Iblur said, “The road was so bad with potholes everywhere, more like a death trap. We are very happy that the team came and fixed the pothole here.” So far, the team has covered around 6,000 potholes in various cities like Bengaluru, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Amritsar.