Ghaziabad: Ghaziabad municipal commissioner Vikaramadiya Singh Malik has pulled up contractors working under the Chief Minister Green Road Infrastructure Development Urban (CM-GRID) scheme over slow progress on road projects in the city, including in Indirapuram, where only 5% progress has been made. Singh reviewed progress on Thursday and told contractors penalties will be imposed if work does not pick up pace.“We have a March 2027 deadline to complete this work, but work has been going on at a very slow pace. I have instructed contractors to speed up work or else a penalty will be imposed on them. Since the road stretches are dug up all over, care must be taken to ensure that it does not cause public inconvenience,” the municipal commissioner said.At Indirapuram township, a 10-km stretch is in various stages of construction, but physical progress has only reached 5%. Mounds of dirt and loose sand dug up at sites throughout the township have turned the locality into a dust bowl.Residents say all the greenery has been lost in the area, with dust pollution taking over the once-idyllic spots where kids played and older residents would go for their morning walks. The situation is unlikely to improve for the rest of the year.“Some work, either road repair or drain work, is always going on in Indirapuram at any given point in time. If it is Kala Patthar Road one day, it will be Suceta Kruplani Road another day and another stretch the next day. The problem is this seems like eternity,” said Ayush Mishra, a resident of Gaur Green City. “There is a serious lack of planning on the part of agencies and departments. Without factoring in the problems it will cause, they just start the work, which misses deadline after deadline while residents suffer.”The increase in dust pollution has also led to health concerns for those living in the area. The situation is especially dire for those with pre-existing health issues. Frequent coughing and breathing problems have become the norm for many.“My son is asthmatic and the road just outside our society has been dug up since winter. They are carrying out drain work and one half of the road is unusable. But the season has changed and it is so dry and one bike is enough to trigger a dust bowl on the stretch and every time my son goes to the playground on the other side of the road, he is wheezing,” said Swati Choudhary, a resident of Supertech society.Sanjeev Sinha, a yoga instructor who conducted classes at a park in Patrakar Vihar Society where he lives, told TOI, “Even in the morning there is a high level of dust concentration in the air. Deep breathing leads to mass coughing among my students. So I shifted my classes indoors.”Commuters here have had to brave these inhospitable conditions every day for months now.“Take a test. Close your eyes while commuting in a cab and as soon as you enter Indirapuram, you get the cacophony of blaring horns, bumpy roads due to uneven and dug-up roads and, of course, dust pollution. Your other sensory organs will tell you you have entered Indirapuram. Such is the condition. Cab drivers won’t come to your society and they will drop you far away from your home. You have to walk down no matter whether it is day or night,” said Raj Shekhar, a resident of Arihant Harmony.Shekhar went on to add, “They say in NCR the pollution cuts your life expectancy by 11 years and I bet if we were to do a study of Ghaziabad and Indirapuram alone it would be much more than 15 years. We bought flats worth crores here for what?”Currently, road stretches totalling 20km are under repair in Indirapuram and some other spots across the city under the CM-GRID scheme. Work has been taken up with a Rs 300 crore estimated budget, of which Rs 223 crore has already been sanctioned. Despite this, work on the ground crawls along.A 4-km Saheed Capt Manoj Pandey Marg (Kanawani Puliya) to NH9, from Suceta Kruplani Road and from Kala Patthar Road to Kaveri Marg, has seen only 1% progress. The 1.8-km stretch going from Kala Pathhar Road to Saheed Capt Manoj Pandey Marg via Sushila Nayar Marg has seen slightly better pace with 8% progress.Another 1.13-km stretch from Sushila Nayar Marg to Kala Pathhar via North India Mall road has seen so little progress it is not even close to reaching 1% at 0.26%. The situation is similar on a 1.83-km stretch from Kala Pathhar Road to Saheed Capt Manoj Pandey Marg via Kasturba at only 0.25%.Indirapuram township is not alone in this. In other parts of the city, too, the progress continues at a snail’s pace. At the stretch from Dabur Chowk to Kaushambi Bus Stand via EDM Mall to Charan Singh Road, from Vaishali Sector 4 to Harsh Vardhan Marg via Dharam Marg, the progress is also less than 1%.“That is the nature of the work. For concrete slabbing, you need time for it to settle, and then there is a set process before we undertake work, like survey, tendering, grant of work order, and the commencement of actual work, and this takes time,” a GMC official said.A kiosk owner on Mangal Pandey Road said the road work has also affected businesses and vendors in the area. “The stretch has been barricaded, which reads ‘Caution-Chief Minister Green Road Infrastructure Development Urban Scheme.’ Hardly any customers visit my shop these days because of road conditions. I tried shifting elsewhere but my competitors would not allow me to do so. It is affecting my business,” the vendor said.
