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Biocon MD lashes out at B’luru civic body over poor quality of public projects
Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, the chairperson and managing director of Biocon Ltd, on Friday lashed out at the civic authorities over the poor quality of works completed by the city corporation
Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, the chairperson and managing director of Biocon Ltd, on Friday lashed out at the civic authorities over the poor quality of works completed by the city corporation.
“Is this what @BBMPCOMM accepts as a completed project? I am so depressed to see our city in ruins with no pride left. All other cities hv (have) used the pandemic to complete road projects except us!” Shaw said in a post on Twitter.
She posted a picture of what appears to be a newly laid out concrete footpath that looks haphazard and incomplete with loose stones covering one part of it.
She tagged Dr CN Ashwath Narayan, the deputy chief minister in the post as well.
Netizens responded to the tweet by posting several more such examples of poor quality of infrastructure across the city.
The state government had stated that it would use the covid-19 pandemic-induced lockdown to complete all road and other infrastructure projects.
The statements by Shaw, one of Bengaluru’s most prominent residents, come at a time when the city’s infrastructure appears to have deteriorated further from before the pandemic.
Bengaluru, once referred to as the garden city, is among the most polluted in the country largely due to excessive vehicular movement and relentless construction activities.
Almost all roads in Bengaluru are currently in a deplorable condition, which successive governments attribute to its “developing” nature.
Road and other infrastructure works are taken up periodically, costing the tax-payers thousands of crores, but are rarely ever in driveable conditions that has added to the challenges of India’s IT capital.
The BBMP’s budget, however, has remained in the ballpark of ₹10,000 crores per year.
The civic body set aside ₹473 crore for upgradation of roads under chief minister BS Yediyurappa’s ambitious “Mission 2022”.
The BBMP budget 2021-22 provides for around ₹20 lakhs per ward for each of the around 200 wards in the city as part of the goal to reach 1000 kms of walkable footpaths across Bengaluru.
However, most of the footpaths have been dug out, barring a few completed Tender Sure roads in the central business district.
The civic body set aside ₹473 crore for up-gradation of roads under chief minister BS Yediyurappa’s ambitious “Mission 2022”, a campaign to overhaul the city to mark the 75th year of independence.
The ambitious mission, initiated by chief minister BS Yediyurappa, proposes the development of 12 high-density corridors, totalling nearly 200km.
The campaign also proposed rejuvenating lakes and increasing green cover.
The recent rains between July 4 to 7 had chipped away newly laid roads, water logged and dangerous for pedestrians and commuters.
The increase in construction activities in public infrastructure has also brought down the quality of air, water and the general quality of living in a city that aspires to be referred to as “global city”.
The infrastructure in Bengaluru has barely kept up with its prowess in technology, startups, biotechnology and aerospace among other attributes.
There are at least 147 kms of roads within Bengaluru, under major projects, that are currently under construction, according to the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP, the city’s civic body).
“We should hope to complete it by the end of December,” according to one senior official of the BBMP, requesting anonymity.
He added that the delays in completion of works is due to shifting of utilities and not to disrupt traffic movement. He added that even the police only give staggered approvals to avoid traffic blocks.
However, a day of driving in Bengaluru would give the true picture as almost 9.4 million vehicles moving at snail’s pace due to poor quality of roads and congestion, has even earned the city the reputation of having the world’s worst traffic globally in 2019.
