"My office is 2.5 kilometres from where I live. I left office at 5.30 in the evening day before, and I reached at 8. You really have to struggle to find a patch of road in between the potholes. Seriously! I’m not exaggerating,” says Ranjita Praseed, a resident of Whitefield locality in Bengaluru.
What once used to be a quaint locality has now turned into a major IT hub with the biggest of companies setting up offices. However, the roads continue to turn into rubble. Fed up with government inaction, interior designer and Whitefield resident Deepa Ravi has decided to take matters into her own hands.
Deepa has started a petition on Change.org requesting the CM to rebuild roads so that children can go to school safely. “Some kids from my locality who study in the Indus international school, once took four hours to come back home while it should ideally take only one hour. They reached home at 8 in the evening. You can imagine the agony the kids go through waiting in the traffic for so long,” said Deepa.
In the petition, she says “The bumpy roads lead to bad backs and other health disorders. With a number of parents traveling with their children on two-wheelers, the whole setup is a disaster in the making! Many lives have already been lost to our horrible roads”
Deepa is not the only one complaining. Over 4,000 people signed the petition within a day of it being created, and now four days later another 2,000 people have signed.
Another resident Sanjita says that the roads in Whitefield are always dug up. “Recently they dug it up under the Cauvery Water Supply Scheme. But I’ve never seen them lay the road back after their work is done. That is the problem,” she says.
“I am petitioning directly to the Chief Minister because we have already met the commissioner of BBMP but it wasn’t effective. There is Minister George who is appointed for Bangaluru Urban Development. If not the CM, we want to talk with him at least,” Deepa says. She wants to ask George for basic roads to be laid and proper planning to be done. “We need foot over bridges, proper footpaths and closed potholes,” she says.