Hindustan Times 20.10.2010
Two cave-ins on one road, BMC says it has no money for repairs
Two road cave-ins at Sunder Nagar, Kalina in the past month, are making parents in the area jittery. Ten days ago, a bus carrying about 40 children, almost tumbled into a huge crater caused by a cave-in. “We could see our children falling over each other, calling for their parents and panicking,” Shiv Vishwanathan, 39, said. A few minutes later, the driver managed to expertly extricate the bus from the pit.
For over a month now, residents of Sunder Nagar have seen one of their arterial roads caving in, part by part. Interestingly, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has said it doesn’t have funds to repair it. This means that harried residents will have to wait till the civic body arranges for funds.
P Raghvan, chairman of Save Garden & Neighbourhood of Sunder Nagar (Ext) Association, (SGNSNA), said, “The civic body has been very careless in maintaining this road. When a portion of it first caved in, we informed them at once, but they ignored us. A few days later, another portion caved in, too. They didn’t take any notice this time either.”
A senior official from H East ward said, “The repair work is going to cost us around Rs 4 lakh. At the moment, we have no funds to repair the road because none have been sanctioned. We have now asked the local corporator if she can sanction the work from her own funds.”
Corporator Alice Therratil said she was out of funds. “I’ve exhausted my funds for the year, but it’s the work of the ward to take care of such repairs. They are passing the buck to me.”
According to the official, the road, an asphalted one, was built just four years ago, by the civic body’s storm water drain department. The official added that a culvert under the road may have caused the cave-in. “There must have been some leakage that caused the foundation of the road to be eroded, as a result of which the road caved in,” he said.
