Federation slams Chandigarh civic body for poor condition of roads

The Federation of Sectors Welfare Association, Chandigarh (FOSWAC), has slammed the Municipal Corporation (MC) for the poor condition of roads, which, it claim, has gone from bad to worse.

Chairman of the federation Baljinder Singh Bittu said the residents had never seen such a deplorable condition of roads in their lifetime. People have blamed the mismanagement of funds in the past few years for the potholed roads.

Bittu was addressing the Executive Committee Meeting of the federation at People Convention Centre in Sector 36 here today. He said instead of fixing priorities, the MC wasted funds on unimportant works.

Speaking about the parking issues, he said the corporation was losing revenue worth crores due to the poor management and planning. He said all decisions on projects such as Metro and the Tribune flyover taken after long discussions in the past

are undone by the authorities without caring for the public interests. The Chairman demanded that the RWAs should be involved in all development activities.

Meanwhile, Sanjay Arora, MC Chief Engineer, listened to the issues related to the residents. JS Gogia and RC Nayyar said there was an urgent need to bring about changes in the MC structure as the current system had failed miserably. He suggested that FOSWAC should demand direct election for the Mayor with a five-year term.

President of Sector 13 (Manimajra) RWA KL Aggarwal said the funds for parks maintained by RWAs have not been released for more than seven months. Ajay, secretary of the Sector 26 RWA, said the condition of the grain market in Sector 26 was pathetic.

Meanwhile, Arora assured the federation of full cooperation from the MC. He said the process to float tenders for road re-carpeting was underway and the work would be started in the coming days. Regarding the issue of Dadumajra dump, he said there would be no more extension in the time set for its removal and the problem will be resolved by the end of this year.

Arora said FOSWAC should make a weekly schedule and send it to MC so that a meeting with all officials concerned can be arranged in their respective sectors. He said information about file movement in the corporation is already available on the E-file system and it can be tracked online. The process of collecting debris and other building waste will be started soon.