Irked by Auda, school contemplates building roads on its own

The Bopal area of the city has been adopted by and been under the jurisdiction of the Ahmedabad Urban Development Authority (Auda) for quite some time now.

However, as far as the pace of civic work in the area is concerned, Bopal continues to remain an orphan.

The slow pace of work in the area has left roads in a bad shape, and many internal roads face acute water logging. Having failed to get either Auda or the gram panchayat to pay attention to the condition of the roads, the Shiv Ashish School located in the locality finally sought the help of the parents of their students, to get the roads repaired.

"The condition of the approach roads to the school has gone from bad to worse because of Auda's digging work," alleged Rekha Desai, trustee of Shiv Ashish School. She further added that they spoke to authorities of the urban development body several times, but in vain. 

The school issued a circular asking the parents if they were willing to pay Rs1,000 per child as development fund. "We regret to say that the government agencies are slow and rather indifferent.

As members of the community, if we consider taking up the responsibility of constructing the road around the school for the sake of our children, we have to share the responsibility of raising the funds," said the circular.

The school authorities were prepared to bear 40% of the cost of constructing the road, and asked parents to pay the remaining 60%.

However, the school's plan could not materialise as the parents were not willing to contribute. "We wanted to take an initiative in this direction, considering that the civic authorities were paying no heed to our pleas, but did not get support from parents. So now, the question of taking the project further does not arise," said Desai.

Bopal is fortunate in that at least the main roads in the area are now free of water logging, thanks to the drainage system.

However, internal roads in certain parts of Satellite in the city still suffer from the same problem, with no respite in sight. "Many internal roads such as that from Big Daddy restaurant to the water tank in the area are in a pathetic state. These need to be mended urgently," said Anjana Patel, the sarpanch of Bopal.

The Bopal gram panchayat believes that Auda needs to ensure roads are repaired after digging, and adds that this does not have anything to do with the panchayat.

"People are suffering due to the slow pace of work. However, we do not enough resources to work in place of the Auda," said Patel.
On the other hand, Auda officials said that construction of TP roads in Bopal is likely to start very soon. "I visited Bopal recently.

Tenders will be floated for construction of the roads, and work is likely to be started within two months," said Mahesh Barot, deputy executive engineer with Auda.