No dept ready to repair damaged stretch of Dugri-Dhandra Road

Tribune News Service

Harshraj Singh

Ludhiana, October 11

The badly damaged stretch of Dugri-Dhandra Road here is crying for attention for a long period and it is still not clear which government department would repair or recarpet it.

The stretch (which is less than one km) from a turn near the Dugri police station to Jain Mandir Chowk on Dugri-Dhandra Road is in a dilapidated condition, causing mishaps while the government departments were passing the buck to each other, residents said.

Ahead of the previous Assembly elections, the residents and shopkeepers had staged a protest while displaying banners to thank elected representatives for forcing them to live under hell-like conditions due to the extremely bad condition of the stretch.

A trader associated with the Dugri-Dhandra Road Shopkeepers’ Association, Sanjeev Kumar, said complaints were made to the Municipal Corporation, PWD and GLADA during past years but the badly damaged road had not been recarpeted or reconstructed to date. Letters regarding the road condition were also written to the Chief Minister but to no avail, he said.

“The poor condition of the stretch was being ignored for the past five years. Once, after our repeated complaints, repair work was conducted here but it had washed away soon amid rains. Now, the broken stretch is causing mishaps but no department takes the responsibility. Even there is no provision to drain out rainwater from the road and its condition worsened during the rainy days. The government should direct the department concerned to ensure reconstruction of the road without any further delay,” he said.

Gagandeep Singh, a resident, said: “Damaged road portions have left us to face a harrowing time. We want the government to fix the responsibility of the department concerned.” Another resident said the MC had carried out some sewerage-related work on the stretch near GLADA’s LIG flats around four years ago. Later, MC officials claimed that the damaged stretch was not under the MC’s jurisdiction.

MC Executive Engineer Rakesh Singla said areas on the one side of the stretch fall under the Municipal Corporation’s Zone D and the other side was under Panchayati Raj. But the PWD was the department concerned to repair the road stretch.

On the other hand, PWD SDO Kanwaljit Singh said the road stretch near the Dugri police station to Jain Mandir Chowk was not under the jurisdiction of the PWD. It falls under the MC and the PWD can’t work there.

He said the road from Jain Mandir Chowk to Dhandra was under PWD.

Gill MLA Jiwan Singh Sangowal said the residents brought the matter to his notice that no department was getting the damaged road recarpeted. “I along with PWD officials would inspect the road soon and required measures would be taken,” he said.

MLA from the Atam Nagar constituency Kulwant Singh Sidhu could not be contacted for comments. Sidhu had earlier stated that he had written to the Chief Minister regarding the matter.

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