NMC repairs broken parapet walls of Pachpaoli bridge

Finally, Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) has repaired the parapet walls of Pachpaoli bridge broken at two places. Citizens had to wait for six months to see those getting repaired. Fortune seemed to be with civic authorities as no casualty was registered. ‘The Hitavada’ has been raising the issue consistently in the public interest. The sight of broken parts of parapet walls at bridge while moving from Kamal chowk was terrible. The parapet walls at two places got collapsed with people moving ahead after crossing the site, praying to almighty that they did not fall under the bridge. As usual one agency builds such constructions and the other one is supposed to maintain it. There are lot of shares from various agencies and nobody knows who is supposed to repair. Public Works Department (PWD) had constructed the first flyover-cum-Railway Over Bridge (RoB) about 35 years ago. Nagpur Municipal Corporation was supposed to look after its maintenance which it never did. People of this area kept demanding renovation or widening of the bridge. But their demands fell on deaf ears.

‘The Hitavada’ had a talk with Ulhas Debadwar, Chief Engineer of PWD who had instructed Anil Kadu, Executive Engineer with NMC to get the work done three months ago. Unfortunately he did nothing citing the reason of election code of conduct. But Abhijeet Bangar, Municipal Commissioner came into picture and the scenario changed. According to him election code of conduct could not become obstacle as far as safety of people was concerned. He had promised to do the repair work within eight days and he did it.

Issue of broken parts of parapet walls of Pachpaoli bridge was being raised by the people of the area continuously but nobody took seriously till Abhijit Bangar took over as Municipal Commissioner. People were consoled by the authorities that bridge was being widened so every loopholes would be removed. But people’s contention was that before the work of widening begins the existing situation should be improved. If not it would make further damages that were unlikely to be repaired. Agreeing with people’s sentiments, Bangar had assured that work of reconstruction of the complete bridge could be taken up later but the work of repairing the parapet walls should be given priority. The Municipal Commissioner pursued the matter with his subordinates and got it done.