Rajahmundry: Civic officials fail to provide basic amenities

Rajahmundry: With festive season round the corner, Rajahmundry is abuzz with a large number of people coming from several parts in Godavari districts, for purchase of mainly garments and gold jewellery worth several lakhs of rupees per day. However, they are finding it difficult to park thier vehicles, including four wheelers and relieve themselves as there are no amenities being provided by the civic administration.

People along with their family members are getting out of their homes from other places for shopping garments and gold jewellery, mainly in the main road. The crowd will especially be more during weekends. Those who come to the main road using their vehicles find no place to park them. 

This results in them parking the vehicles in a haphazard manner on the road causing inconvenience to other commuters either to cross the road or move from place to place. Traffic police fail to organise parking of vehicles especially at Kotagummam Centre during weekends except that they do not pay heed to the ‘No Parking’ signs as there is no place for them to park their vehicles. 

When there was a huge rush of people to a newly launched commercial establishment dealing with garments on Sunday, the police failed to regulate the crowd even as they blocked the road on either side. With no space to park vehicles, people are parking them at Pushkar ghat and even out there, there is no regulation on parking vehicles with people parking them at their will affecting vehicular traffic on the road connecting towards the Municipal Corporation road and towards the bund road in the city.

As the narrow main road is occupied by hawkers who place various items for sale on either side of the road, the carriage way gets further narrowed. In addition to it, push-cart traders too park their vehicles in the middle of road to draw the attention of buyers. 

Two wheelers belonging to buyers and workers in various commercial establishments get parked on either side of the road and this leaves a very little space on the road for the people to walk from shop to shop to purchase their interested items. Worsening the situation further, youngsters zoom past buyers on their high-speed bikes posing a risk to pedestrains walking on the narrow road causing fear psychosis among the people that they may get severely injured if hit. 

The youngsters blow horns that are extremely loud sound. This is accompanied by the exhaust, which also lets out a high decibel note as they remove the silencers of their bikes. This makes people feel nervous to even walk on the road. People are finding fault with the police for failing to regulate such youngsters despite it being a regular phenomenon on the main road.

Taking advantage of the situation, pickpockets, mobile phone lifters, chain snatchers, vehicle lifters and other anti-social elements are playing their role to knock away valuables from the consumers.This apart, the people who go on shopping spree for several hours find no community toilets to relieve themselves. Only a few big shops offer toilets on their premises. A large number of people visit only small shops with no toilets. 

This results in men finding out open places and narrow streets corners to relieve themselves while women find it a tough time to overcome the problem. Noted businessman Bommana Raj Kumar said, “We have appealed to the civic authorities to provide parking lots, toilets and dustbins mainly in the vicinity of Main Road so that people can go for shopping comfortably with no hurry and relieve themselves, but in vain as they failed to initiate any action for the benefit of people so far.”City planner V. Ram Kumar said, “We will look into these issues to solve them. Traffic police are supposed to regulate vehicles and we will take up it with the police.”

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