Visakhapatnam: Bhavani Gardens mired in civic woes

Visakhapatnam: Despite bagging certificates thrice for maintaining cleanliness years before, Bhavani Gardens is mired in civic woes.

The layout was developed in 1990 and the colony now has more than 50 group houses and apartment blocks.

Bhavani Gardens Welfare Association plays an active role in bringing out the issues and devising ways to sort them out.

Owing to age, drains and roads are in a bad shape in the neighbourhood. The roads dug up for the UGD works remain improperly covered in most part of the lanes. Also, the channel through which wastewater flushes out is not proper either. "In some of the streets, domestic wastewater gets stagnated on the roads as there is no proper link to the drainage system. This is one of the issues we face here," explains Kola Visweswara Rao, president of the residents' welfare association (RWA).

After the completion of the UGD, residents here lament that it took them a lot of time to set the roads back on track. "Even to do a patch work, we ended up making repeated trips to meet the officials concerned. Some of the streets still paint a bad picture. We have given a number of representations to the officials but nothing much has been done so far," says A Vasu Babu, secretary of the RWA.

Of all the issues, the locals in the neighbourhood place repair works of the drainage system on the priority list. "It is followed by levelling of roads. During monsoons, drains here get clogged and emanate foul smell," says B Surya Rao, a resident of Bhavani Gardens.

Earlier, between 2017 and 2019, the colony bagged A-level certificate in maintaining sanitation and cleanliness for three times from the US Agency for International Development (USAID). However, the residents now struggle to maintain cleanliness standards for apparent reasons.