Dug up roads, civic apathy pose threat to commuters

Nagpur: Numerous developmental activities take place in the city for improving quality of life. However, pedestrians and motorists continue to remain sufferers owing to the apathy of the contractors concerned and the civic body alike. Most of the city roads were dug up for laying underground cables in the past one year. Though Nagpur Municipal Corporation allows such activities to take place on certain conditions to ensure public safety, the contractors do not put up caution boards to warn road users or cordon off the portion, thus endangering the lives of commuters.The NMC officials, particularly from the hotmix department which is supposed to monitor the work, also turn a blind eye to the grave violations.
A fresh example of this could be spotted near the busy old Katol road square. Here, SNDL — a private power franchise — dug up long trenches on the road from old Katol road square to Raj Nagar and these were not fenced off with reflective tapes to warn road users during night hours. After laying the cables, the trenches were not closed and road users were exposed to the poor safety measures in place. Even when Team TOI visited the locality on Monday, it found the dug up portion open.
Another threat came to fore is that the street lights on this portion were not functioning posing more threat to motorists during night hours.
Though the issue was raised in various meetings of the Nagpur Municipal Corporation including general body meeting and the mayor Pravin Datke had asked officials to monitor it, nothing has changed on ground zero. The contractor is least bothered to ensure any safety measures at the site as no civic officials monitor the work. The situation prevails in most of the arterial roads and in residential areas where roads were dug either for laying pipelines or pipeline repair works.
Guidelines provided in the NMC’s contract states that precautionary measures such as barricading the work area and putting up sign boards should be taken up by the contractor. Also the board should have details of nature of work and date of completion. However, most of the work areas remain without any sign boards. At this spot too, no such boards were found and also the labourers working there were not aware of the safety guidelines.
Also, in the absence of the police personnel to regulate traffic in these areas, vehicle users are the sufferers as chaos prevails. Road users want the minimum security measures to be adopted in work areas at least on arterial roads where the movement of vehicles is high.
After TOI contacted NMC’s hotmix department, Rajesh Gurmule said that directives have been issued to SNDL to follow all the guidelines. He, however, claimed that the power company had covered the work area with reflector tapes but that were removed by some unscrupulous elements. Gurmule said work to lay cables is complete now and the trenches would be covered soon.
SNDL spokesperson Deepanshu Khirwadkar said: “The said work is being executed by a vendor of SNDL. As a socially responsible organization, we do acknowledge that such open trenches without barricading or radium taping may prove to be hazardous. During all development and infrastructure works done in the past, SNDL has always ensured that public safety measures are adhered to, as public safety is an essential clause of the assignment contract with all vendors. In this case too, we have immediately instructed the vendor to adhere to terms and do the needful. Proper care would be taken in all future cases to avoid any inconvenience to the public in general.”