PUNE: While Pune was among the first cities in India to introduce a pedestrian policy to easy the commute for commoners back in 2016, these days, pedestrians are constantly facing problems of broken or incomplete footpaths, causing great inconvenience to them. Footpaths at various locations in the city have been found damaged or in some cases, even unfinished, causing pedestrians to complain to the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) about repairing/completing them.
While there are redressal committees within the PMC, residents feel that on multiple occasions, their complaints have not been resolved in a timely manner or worse still, completely ignored. Twitter user Ganesh S took to the social media site to complain about a broken footpath in Aundh while another resident, Navneet Sahay, also complained about a similar problem at Kalyani Nagar chowraha. A third Twitter user, Amit Shirodkar, brought to the fore a similar problem in Aundh in hotel Sarja lane. “Incomplete smart city work at wireless colony, Aundh; similar scenes across Aundh since months. Request your attention,” tweeted Ganesh along with pictures from the location.
Residents said broken footpaths can cause all sorts of inconvenience to the people using them. Prashant Inamdar, convener of Pedestrians First, said, “A footpath is used by people of all age groups. The attitude of the corporation is like make them and forget about them but that should not be the case because a broken footpath can prove to be very dangerous.”
Harshad Abhyankar, director of the Save Pune Traffic Movement, an NGO working in the field of transportation in the city, said, “A footpath breaking can be because of multiple reasons which do not have anything to do with the PMC. But the responsibility to fix it definitely lies with the PMC and that should be done on time to avoid any sort of inconvenience caused to the people.”
{{/usCountry}}Harshad Abhyankar, director of the Save Pune Traffic Movement, an NGO working in the field of transportation in the city, said, “A footpath breaking can be because of multiple reasons which do not have anything to do with the PMC. But the responsibility to fix it definitely lies with the PMC and that should be done on time to avoid any sort of inconvenience caused to the people.”
{{/usCountry}}Regular maintenance of footpaths is the PMC’s responsibility. The road department takes care of footpaths that are more than 12m broad while footpaths less than 12m broad are taken care of by the ward offices.
Sandip Khalate, assistant municipal commissioner at the Aundh-Baner ward office, said, “We constantly carry out maintenance work and that goes on the whole year. The time that is taken to repair any faulty footpath depends on how damaged it is. If it is something minor, we repair it fast. But if it is something big, we might have to wait for funds which can take some time.”