Most road works to miss deadline ahead of monsoon

Civic body working on issuing new tenders to desilt drains only now; road repairs too delayed

If the havoc caused by the recent high-intensity pre-monsoon showers are an indication of how the city’s infrastructure would stand against the monsoon rains, Bengalureans are bracing for the worse.

The civic body is working on issuing new tenders to desilt storm-water drains (SWDs) and do extensive roadworks only now, even as the monsoon is expected to set in early this year.

Chief Civic Commissioner Tushar Giri Nath said that during the recent city rounds, Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai, who also holds charge of the city, observed that most of the desilting of drains were happening in the lined drains and not in the non-lined drains, which has caused a lot of flooding due to heavy silting and backflow.

“The Chief Minister instructed us to immediately take up desilting of these non-lined drains. We have called for a short-term tender, which will be finalised in a week, and the work completed over the next one month. We have divided the work into several packages, and will start them simultaneously to ensure that the works are on track. In the ongoing works in the lined drains, we will speed up the work,” he said. 

But the timing of the work has drawn the ire of civic activists. “What we don’t understand is as to why the civic body doesn’t learn from the previous monsoons and start preparing early? It is such a joke that the civic body is tendering desilting SWDs now, days ahead of the monsoon,” said D. S. Rajashekhar of Bengaluru Praja Vedike.

The recent rains also brought more misery to the city’s roads. The civic body recently mapped 10,282 potholes using the FixMyStreet app and have begun work on filling them. “We are already in the process of tackling 5,500 potholes, and we are confident of filling all the identified potholes in the next 10 days,” said Mr. Giri Nath. “We are working on a war footing to fill all the potholes in the city, using all modes and resources available, including Python,” he added. 

Meanwhile, Bengaluru City Traffic Police have listed 59 spots across the city that regularly see waterlogging. “We asked the traffic police on the ground to geotag all locations that see flooding and cause traffic issues, based on which we have submitted the list to BBMP,” said Joint Commissioner of Police (Traffic) B.R. Ravikanthe Gowda.