People share their grievances on social media to the civic bodies but it seldom happens that the footpaths of city become safer for the pedestrians.
Treading through footpaths is increasingly becoming an ominous task for the pedestrians in Dwarka. They are getting extra cautious while moving through the footpaths. The reason is the increasing incidents of people falling and getting injured because of the open manholes and missing drain covers on footpaths.
People share their grievances about such problem on social media to the civic bodies but it seldom happens that the footpaths of city become safer for the pedestrians as far as open manholes and missing drain covers are concerned.
Sectors like 3, 4, 5, 1, 12, 13, 14 and 16 are the worst places with such kind of footpaths. General Secretary of Studio Apartments in Sector 16B said, “You cannot walk on footpaths in our sector. This is the neglected sector and no one cares about it. I have written several times but nothing happened.” Mumukshu also shared the situation by sending some photographs on WhatsApp groups of Dwarka.
A couple of years back, wife of JC Malhotra, a senior citizen and resident of Welcome CGHS (Cooperative Group Housing Society) got badly hurt after falling into the drain as its cover on the footpath was missing.
In September this year, JC Malhotra, in his eighties, himself somehow narrowly escaped from falling due to missing cover of drain on the footpath near National Apartments in Sector 3. He then started a campaign by writing to the authorities and talking to the area Councillor, MLA etc to make the footpaths properly maintained so that no one could fall. But his efforts went in vain except the covering of a particular place where the cover was missing and for which the complaint was made by him.
Now he is sad that there are hundreds of such places over the drain where the covers are still missing and people are in danger of using the footpaths. He expressed to City Spidey with a heavy heart that neither the DDA nor the Corporation or the area representatives took the subject seriously.
He told to City Spidey, “If you fall into it you could die. I am a sufferer as my wife was on bed for a long time due to injury after falling in the drain. Despite my campaign, they did nothing and now I am feeling very sad as senior citizen. Our area is full of open manholes and footpaths with missing drain covers. This must be taken seriously.”
When that incident happened, Malhotra had sent the complaint of 17 such places with missing covers but they are still uncovered. Residents, mainly senior citizens said that the footpaths were converted into death traps and the civic bodies were not concerned. They said that now because of open manholes and missing covers on the footpaths over the deep drain, they are compelled to walk on the main road.
VK Gupta, a resident of Sector 11 said, “Covering of drains and open manholes is a regular and routine process which must be looked after by DDA and Municipal Corporation. But this is not happening here. The public representatives on the other hand are least bothered about such things. In that condition, the common people are suffering and mainly the senior citizens are suffering.”
City Spidey had a round of the whole Dwarka and found that the footpaths were not maintained and there are many drains whose covers are missing. It was found that even near the private and government schools, footpaths over the drains were in dangerous state for the pedestrians. People said that in those areas many times the ministers, MP, MLA and Councillors visited for political programmes but no one took concern of such footpaths.
On the subject, Chief Engineer of Dwarka, RK Singh said that he would take the subject into concern and do the needful for those footpaths which are under DDA.
