RIP roads: Citizens hold funeral, launch online protest
THANE: Miffed by the Thane Municipal Corporation’s (TMC) lack of action to improve bad condition of roads, citizen groups on Friday staged protests in different ways.
While residents of Ghodbunder Road marched in a single file and blinked the headlights of their cars, school children and residents of Pokharan staged a funeral of the dead road. Ghodbunder residents also started a campaign on Twitter with the #fixroadselsenovotes.
The corporation claimed that the pothole-filling work was being hindered by continuous rains and traffic congestion.
Shilpa Rao, a resident of Ghodbunder, said, “Around 110 cars from Hiranandani Estate and Waghbil junction marched in a single file, with their headlights blinking, till Bhandup pumping station. It was a way to express our helplessness.”
The residents have decided to give a memorandum to the state government on Monday with a list of five points that has affected their commute. Meanwhile, Thane Citizen Forum , who drafted an online petition against bad roads signed by over 7,000 people, staged a silent protest spearheaded by school children and residents of Vartak Nagar. The forum, in a sarcastic obituary to potholes, remarked that the state had not taken any action to improve the condition of roads.
The TMC said that not much of the budget allocated for road repair has been spent on potholefilling this year. Anil Patil, city engineer, said, “Apart from the ₹2 crore spent on road repair for monsoon, we had allotted ₹60 lakh earlier this month only for filling potholes. However, this amount has still not been used as we did not get a break from the continuous rain.”