Thanks for your front page demand to ‘Return pavements to pedestrians’ in City Kemp, 13-19 Feb 2015. There is appalling apathy to social and moral sensitivity on the part of the affluent section of the society.
Some of the main actors, besides BBMP, guilty of apathy are: Construction companies and contractors who openly and brazenly use public property- pavements, as their free personal property to store their construction materials like sand, pebbles, iron bars, cement blocks, temporary cabins for their workers and security staff, the debris of old structure.
Even the big cement mixer trucks, generators etc. are parked on the public property. These happens everywhere and brazenly and continues for months together till that construction is over. BBMP does not earn anything out of it, but the pavements and the roads get damaged. People pay for the repairs of these damaged pavements and roads.
The private and public vehicle owners who go on buying more and more vehicles without taking due responsibility and paying for the parking of these vehicles. They also merrily illegally occupy the pavements. This problem is chronic and acute in colonies where the inner roads are narrow and away from the main roads. No vehicle purchase and registration should be allowed unless the applicant has his own parking arrangements.
Bungalow owners beautify their surroundings-read public pavements. They put huge plant-pots and grow plants all around on the pavements as if they own the pavements bordering their houses.
Result, public has to walk on roads and face the accident risks. The best the authorities and the government can do, is to stop such illegal use of the public properties and the least is to collect proper rental from them so that at least the public office earns out of it. Such deterrent action may also reduce the corruption that may be involved in these illegal encroachment.
-Premji Bhanushali
Mumbai
Return pavements to pedestrians
