Rain leaves city roads in tatters

The condition of several roads in the city was already in a bad state owing to delay in repair and digging done for laying pipelines for the surface water project scheme. But the monsoon has left these in tatters.

The condition of roads in almost all localities, including Model Town, Urban Estate, Guru Nanakpura, Ali Mohalla, Basti Adda, Central Town, Guru Teg Bahadur Nagar, Mithu Basti, Mota Singh Nagar, New Jawahar Nagar, Model House and Adarsh Nagar, has gone from bad to worse.

Even the main roads, including Kapurthala Road, Nakodar Road, bus stand road and 120-feet road, have huge potholes, making the ride of the commuters risky. The roads circumventing prominent roundabouts, including Football Chowk, Dr BR Ambedkar Chowk, Jyoti Chowk and Guru Ravidas Chowk, too need to be repaired at the earliest for the safety of the residents.

Sahil Sharma, a shopkeeper on Nakodar road, said, "In the past few days, I have noticed at least three bikers having a fall as their vehicles bumped into the deep craters. We have appealed to the councillor of our area to take up the matter and get the road repaired at the earliest".

Looking at the situation, MC officials have been holding daily meetings with the staff. The officials have got patchwork of roads already started. The officials are conducting assessment and planning to float the tenders of the roads soon so that about 50 main, connecting roads could be laid out afresh.

Jalandhar Central Aam Aadmi Party halqa incharge Nitin Kohli held a meeting with Mayor Vaneet Dhir and MC Commissioner Sandeep Rishi and apprised them of an action plan that he had devised to resolve the issues in 23 wards of his Assembly segment. The MC officials said the public concerns of his constituency would be addressed on a priority basis.

Other than road relaying work, he also sought that sanitation, sewerage and drainage problems need to be redressed at the earliest. Senior Deputy Mayor Balbir Singh Bittu and AAP councillors and leaders Vijay Vasan, Ganga Devi, Tarlok Sara, Ashok Sabharwal, Amardeep Kinnu, Deepak, Rajesh Babbar, Manmohan Raju, Rajiv Gill, Jaswinder Singh, Happy, Jatin Gulati and Gurpreet Kaur also met the MC officials for road works in their wards.