Today’s trouble, tomorrows misery

However, those who have chosen to abide by the law still live in houses with kuchha roofs. So much for not flouting the rules.

Though the BMC has constructed SWDs in the front, only a few use them. This is because people will either have to shift their bathrooms in the front or will have to dig the entire house to make an outlet. However, residents, claiming that they use the SWDs regularly, allege that it’s been over a year these drains have not been cleaned. “The authorities managed to clean only a small portion and that too after repeated complaints. The silt is still lying outside the gutter,” says a senior citizen, further complaining that storm water drains have been constructed so haphazardly and, obviously, without much planning that choking and overflowing is common here. This results in water getting accumulated on the roads. To add to this is the deteriorating condition of roads every rainy season.

Discussing the tarred stretches here, the potholes on the roads of Mulund are noless than craters. “One should take a humanitarian view of these problems,” urges K V Lalla, a resident of Mulund Colony. Otherwise a well-maintained township, Mulund suffers from several such problems, which, if not taken care of today, may assume serious dimensions in the near future. Clearing of drains is one of them. Desilting is going on at an energetic pace here, but with not enough trucks for the job, silt can be seen accumulated along the roads here. As a result, in most cases, due to heavy rains, the silt flows back into the the storm water drains. The Ward officer of T-Ward, A S Bidarkar, however, assured immediate action.

The brighter side of Mulund is its sizably small slums, with the exception of Indira Nagar and Vaitra Nagar, near Ashok Nagar, which run parallel to the railway tracks. The wall separating the slums on railway ground has been broken at several places and is being used by slum-dwellers as as a short-cut to a road which is in a pitiable condition. A stretch of this road,residents allege, has not been handed over to the BMC by the developer. There are no street-lights here. Combined with this, constant trespassing by slum-dwellers has resulted in increased cases of sexual harassment.

Adding fuel to the fire is the unattended police chowki in Ashok Nagar. Residents allege that a watchman of a nearby hotel stays here with his family. Heaps of garbage can be seen in the vicinity at any given point of time. Broken SWDs and overflowing drains are a common sight. “We want to adopt the road. For this, we are supposed to submit documents. How are we to do that? Anyway, the civic body collects taxes from all the buildings here, so why doesn’t it provide us with services,” says a resident. The Ward Officer on being confronted with the problems assured that things would soon fall in line. “For the time being we want to prevent the situation from deteriorating further,” he says, lauding the dignitaries who are doing a good job in the suburb. “Active participation and constanthammering by senior citizens has to an extent curtailed the situation from worsening.”