Laharwalpora villagers in Bandipora face hard time due to potholed roads

Bandipora, Dec 4: Just kilometres from district headquarters in Bandipora, Laharwalpora villagers are suffering due to bad roads.

Feeling neglected, the low-lying villagers near Wular banks, and mostly inhibited by the fishermen community, narrate that they have to suffer on a daily basis due to road conditions; the situation, they say, has remained unchanged for several years now.

The road to the village, which starts from Whatpora, has developed deep potholes with even slightest rains making the roads impassable, slushy and filled with mud, locals say.

“Our school children immensely struggle to reach schools, we have to keep long boots handy whenever it rains,” a villager, Mohammad Ramzan Malla said.

Notably, the road which was maintained by the R&B department had last macadamised it in 2014 and since then little to no work has been executed on the road.

With locals pressing for the demand for proper roads at regular intervals, the PMGSY department then initiated works on the road under a project a few years ago, however, locals are fuming that the agency has “abandoned the road project.”

“We have seen no work being done on the road,” locals said, adding “we have apprehensions the project has been wound up.”

They said they feel “embarrassed” when someone from outside visits them. The locals said the problem of rain water logging has been persistent and needed drainage on road sides too to address the problem, but said nothing was being done.

“We have to walk through the lawns of other people or private properties,” locals narrated their ordeal. They said besides using long boots for themselves, “we keep a pair for school going children.”

On taking the issue with the PMGSY officials, they claimed the “civil works on the road have been done awaiting macadamisation”, but the project has hit bottlenecks due to shortage of raw material.

“We were shown two three spots for extracting the material but they turned out to be property of fisheries and other departments or had other issues,” PMGSY Executive Engineer Bandipora, Mohammad Hussain told Greater Kashmir.

Hussain said they have been shown other spots and if they are able to extract the raw material from there, the macadamisation work on the road will be initiated soon.