Garbage strewn across many streets and dilapidated condition of the roads make life miserable for residents of Ammapet Zone in the city as they see no respite in the near future.
Over a lakh people reside in the 16 wards in the zone that also houses a number of cooperative societies and small scale industries.
Poor condition
But roads in most of the 50 streets that were dug for under ground drainage (UGD) work, a year ago, are still in battered condition as no re-laying work has been carried out.
The reason, the contractor failed to carry out work to give house connections, leaving the residents to bear the burnt.
Though the civic body levied penalty for delay in work and terminated the agreement with the contractor, work is yet to begin by the new contractor.
S. Mahendran of Narayan Nagar, 3rd Cross, in Ward 42 said that getting out of the house and reaching the main road is an everyday battle and it is worse during emergency and night hours.
“There are no street lights and two-wheelers and pedestrians have to use the little space available on either side of the half-closed pits in the centre,” he added.
V. Jayaprakash, Chairman, Ammapet Zone told The Hindu that the contractor issue has been sorted out and work would begin in 15 days’ time to covered three wards.
“However, house connections need to be given in other wards and tender process has to begin for re-laying with tar-topped roads which would take much time,” he added.
If battling with poor roads causes hardship to the residents, absence of dustbins on streets lead to people dumping garbage on roads, paving way for dogs to gather at these places and cause sanitation issues.
Foul odour
“Foul odour emanating from the garbage is causing breathing trouble for children and senior citizens,” says Muthulakshmi (45) in Vidhya Mandir in 8 Cross in ward 40.
“Many a times miscreants set fire to the garbage and black smoke affects pedestrians and road users,” she added.
Though civic body officials claim that the garbage is cleared every two days, residents say that placing dustbins in each street or at prime locations would be a permanent solution.
Mr. Jayaprakash said that that currently dustbins were placed only on main roads so that garbage lifting vehicles could easily transport them.
“Around 100 small dustbins would be placed in the wards soon and these would be manually cleared,” he added further.
