Road or slush? The school ride to peril

By Ganesh Mavanji

Mangaluru: An autorickshaw carrying school children  moves slowly on a  mud road with its wheels getting stuck in the deep slush.  With the auto not able to  move any further, a boy carrying his heavy school bag  alights from the vehicle and  succeeds in removing the  wheels from the slush helping the auto to move forward.

All these have been captured in a video which explains the pathetic condition of the road, located at  Sullia taluk in Dakshina  Kannada district, which is  also part of the constituency of Dakshina Kannada district in-charge minister S Angara.

The condition of the 3  km long road stretch between Ajjavara and Paimbechal is pathetic to say  the least. This inter-state  road connects with Bandyadka in Kerala state. Those  who goes to Kerala from  Mandekolu and Ajjavara  village opt to ply on the  same road and those who  go to Mangaluru from Kolchar and Paimbechal also  use it as it connects with  Jalsuru. Hundreds of people use the road on a daily  basis including school going children. While 75 percent of the road comes und e r A j j av a r a G r a m  Panchayat, the remaining  25 percent is under Aletty  Gram Panchayat. The residents of both panchayats  met the local administration and have demanded  concretization of the road.  They have also approached  district in-charge Minister  S Angara to rectify their  problem but it has not happened so far.

It may be recalled that an  image of two school going  children of Sullia taluk repairing a mud road went  viral in social media a few  days ago. This alerted not  only the local administration, but also the Deputy  Commissioner of the district. As a result, measures  were taken by the gram  panchayat to develop the  road. The residents of this  region now expect a similar result on this new video,  which has gone viral now.