Ghaziabad: It has barely rained in the past 48 hours, barring occasional drizzle, but overcast skies and the absence of sunlight have left several parts of the city, particularly the trans-Hindon areas of Indirapuram, in a familiar mess.Jagdhatri Mishra went to a temple in Shipra Sun City and as soon as she got out of her car her ankles sank deep into slush. “I could not have entered the temple with muddy feet so I decided to drive back home but I could not reverse my car because the tyres had sunk in the mud.” She was left in a conundrum. “Where should I park my car? All pedestrian pathways and small parking spaces have become mud holes,” she said.The stretch was dug up for repair work and the trenches were concealed quickly with loose mud before rain. But the showers have turned these stretches into quagmires that unsuspecting pedestrians get sucked into the moment they set foot on them.
Stagnant water and potholed roads are not just health hazards
The junction of Canal Road and the Kanawani bridge has been awash with garbage from a point that GMC claims to be a waste segregation centre. “The backside of GMC’s waste segregation centre is littered and once mixed with garbage, it turns into sludge,” a commuter, Anurag Singh, said. “People just dump the waste here. The solid waste management rules are hardly followed by anyone here. The stench is so overwhelming that it becomes difficult to drive past too.”With the repair and drainage work under way, the road width has been reduced to a single lane. Commuters versed in these ‘muddy traps’ drive on other lanes, leading to snarls and bottlenecks.The stagnant water in the puddles is now raising a stink. Although GMC claims that it has drained a lot of these waterlogged spots, dewatering pumps are a rare sight. “Our focus was on kanwar yatra and we had deployed a sizeable workforce. But from Wednesday they will be back at their respective zones,” said a GMC official.The official, however, said, “Constructive criticisms are welcome but they have to be kept in mind that there are many factors — obsolete and ageing infrastructure, work held up because of bitumen shortage, excess rainfall — that have led to this situation.” He added that GMC did not make Indirapuram but inherited it from GDA. “We are revamping everything and soon all the problems in Indirapuram will be solved.”
