Woman's death, cracks in house walls, protests fail to stir conscience of Budgam district administration
SAS
SRINAGAR, Mar 11: More than a year after work on 20 meters long Garipora bridge - connecting Srinagar with Budgam district including upper Bemina area – started, the Roads and Buildings Department (R&B) Budgam has failed to complete the bridge within the stipulated time, missing three deadlines set by the minister for animal husbandry, Aga Syed Ruhullah Mehdi, minister of state for R&B, Javaid Ahmad Dar.
The R&B’s failure to meet the deadlines has added to the woes of residents of Bemina and adjacent villages, with the district administration acting as a mere spectator. Ironically, not a single top official of the district administration, locals said, has bothered to visit the site to examine the pace of work on the bridge. Locals have blamed R&B department for agonizingly slow progress of work on the bridge.
“DDC Sahab had assured us that the bridge would be completed within three months time. Now, more than a year has passed, the completion of bridge does not seem to be anywhere in sight,” locals said. “DDC has not even bothered to visit here.”
However, the ordeal of locals does not end here.
Before the start of work on Garipora bridge, the DDC Budgam had, as demanded by locals, thrown open Koolipora-Wanipora link road for small vehicles. He had also directed the concerned authorities not to allow heavy vehicular traffic on the Koolipora-Wanipora link road.
However, despite strict orders of the DDC, tippers, trucks, and even oil tankers, continue to ply along the link road which snakes through Wanipora, Koolipora and Mir Mohalla areas.
Barely a week after DDC had issued the order, an oil tanker crushed to death a septuagenarian woman near Koolipora bridge. This was not the first of its kind incident in the area. Eight persons, including a woman and three children, were crushed to death by recklessly driven tippers in the last two years alone on Mirgund-Sepdan-Bemina road, which has been described by locals as “the deadly stretch”.
The old woman’s death on Koolipora road, which the district administration had kept out of bounds for heavy vehicles, led to massive protest in the area. The protestors demanded that the tippers and trucks should not be allowed to ply along 12-feet wide Koolipora-Wanipora link road.
However, the old woman’s death and protest by locals failed to stir the conscience of the district administration.
The tippers, trucks, oil tankers continued to ply along the link road, making a mockery of the district administration.
“The road is 12-feet wide and when tippers and trucks come from both ends they get stuck in the middle, causing frequent gridlocks,’’ locals said. “If there is an emergency, the patients will not reach hospital on time and will, in all likelihood, die enroute.”
Residents of Wanipora, Koolipora, Mir Mohalla had protested against the district administration, claiming that the plying of heavy vehicles along the Koolipora link road had developed cracks in most of the residential houses.
In a fit of anger and lack of choice, the residents of Wanipora decided to involve themselves in restricting the movement of tippers along the link road. However, little did they know that this would lead them behind bars.
“When we failed to get positive response from the district administration including police, we decided to do something on our own. When we tried to stop the tippers, police arrested most of us and even registered FIR against one of us,” they said. “Ironically, the tipper drivers, who have been unauthorisedly plying along the link road, were allowed to go scot-free.”
The locals accused the Bemina police of having nexus with tipperwalas.
“Instead of solving our problems, the police is pressurising us,” they said.
