A nightmare
THE RESIDENTS of South City feel ditched, dumped and duped by the private builder. But, they can?t do anything about it, except living with all odds?-nullah for sewer system, potholes for roads, fluctuations for power supply and dirty drops for water.
—AN EIGHT-year-old boy died of dengue in south city a month back..
—A school bus carrying 30 students fell into the 12-foot deep nullah, hurting 15 seriously..
THE RESIDENTS of South City feel ditched, dumped and duped by the private builder. But, they can’t do anything about it, except living with all odds—-nullah for sewer system, potholes for roads, fluctuations for power supply and dirty drops for water.
Residents settled here with a dream of spending a peaceful life, but they soon turned into a nightmare. “We were carried away by the reputation of the builder, but he ditched us. He handed over the colony to the Lucknow Municipal Corporation without completing full formalities,” alleged President of South City Residents Welfare Association PP Mishra.
“He promised us roads, water, proper sewer, garbage dumping yards, a school, a hospital, a community centre, a bank, markets and huge parks. But, what we have is broken roads, scanty water supply, poor power situation, with voltage fluctuation, choked sewer lines, stinking garbage, which are not cleaned for days, choked nullah and drains working as breeding ground for the mosquitoes. We don’t have any good school, bank, community centre for us.
Besides all these things we are not connected to city directly. We have no direct conveyance for Chowk, Hazratganj or Aminabad. We don’t have any public transport in our area. If at all one falls sick during the night, then he has to arrange the private transport. We came here for heaven but we got hell,” said Mishra with pain in his eyes.
The construction of flyover has worsened the condition further. “We purchased a house 15 Km away from the city to live in a peaceful ambience. The construction of flyover has robbed us of our sleep. The transformer of Sector G was removed to give way to the flyover. But, it has not been re- installed. That’s why we get voltage fluctuation which is having its toll on electrical appliances,” said resident SC Mehta.
“The sewer has no outlet. When it gets choked, it is pumped out in front of our houses, exposing us to other health hazards. Our children have no parks to play, as they are not properly maintained. We have talked to various municipal commissioners after the colony was taken over but there has been no response so far.”
Within six months all roads turned into potholes with blacktop washed away by rain. “The colony looks like a huge pond during the rainy season,” says another resident OP Mathur.
The LMC bosses say that the proper takeover of colony is yet to take place. “We have not received a single penny as development charges from the builders. The takeover of the colony was done under the political pressure. It’s for the builder to deposit development charges as the LMC is a maintenance body,” said additional municipal commissioner AC Sinha.
“We have already told the residents to get in touch with their builder and ask him to deposit the development charges to the LMC. Inspite of no money received from the builders, we have constructed roads and developed a few parks in the area. If there is problem of mosquito there then we would arrange fogging too,” he said.