by Manoj Kumar (8800184857)
Samvada October`22 issue had excerpts of the interaction between Resident Editor Manoj Kumar and GK-2 WA on various issues faced by our colony. Since the list of issues is quite long, we had to break the story into two parts. We present below the concluding part of this interaction that features the issues that could not be covered in the first part. We express our gratitude to the senior members of GK-2 WA including Mr Shadi Ram Sharma (President), Ms Uma Talwar (Vice President), Mr Sanjay Rana (General Secretary) and Mr Ashwani Kapur (Treasurer) for taking out time to hold a candid conversation with us in this regard.
Q With many colony buildings having become old, the construction activity in the colony is in full swing to replace old buildings with the new ones by their owners. This has led to a fair amount of chaos and nuisance that gets created by the Builders. What action is the GK-2WA taking to combat this menace?
GK-2WA Response Presently, we are not involved with the Builders in any manner whatsoever. However we do acknowledge that the need to tackle this issue is becoming more important as the scale of the construction activity grows. Hence we are exploring the possibility of executing a legally admissible Agreement/Code of Conduct with the Builders in which the roles and responsibilities of the Builders will be clearly defined and legally binding upon them. This has also been a practice in several other colonies as per which the Builders are required to make financial compensation not just for the infrastructure/facilities used by them but also to recompense for any damages caused by them. We are currently holding discussions with legal experts in this matter and will soon come out with a policy in this regard
Q The traffic situation in the colony keeps deteriorating rapidly to an extent that it has become a nightmare to drive on the colony roads. What are you doing in this matter?
GK-2 WA Response There are three main causes for heavy traffic movement inside our colony. These are access through our colony to the other neighboring areas, presence of several schools in the colony and the existence of a popular market. We are coordinating with the various schools and the traffic police for better management of the school traffic. We will emphasize upon the need for the schools to depute skilled Traffic Wardens to manage the traffic during the peak hours in the mornings and afternoons. We also came up with several options for management of traffic on the main road outside the M Block Market which is a major traffic bottleneck at present. These options included shifting all the shops for daily essentials (including the Mother Dairy) from the main road to the rear of the market, allowing parking to only one side of the road on that busy stretch, restricting movement of buses on that road and exploring the possibility of making that road one way for traffic movement. All these initiatives have however come a cropper due to two reasons – lack of consensus among the residents on these plans and the practical difficulties in their implementation owing to involvement of multiple Government Authorities. We are nonetheless keen to make a start on the project to declutter this road by plucking the lowest hanging fruits among the different options available to us.
Q You have often cited lack of funds as a major impediment in your functioning. Could you elaborate on this point more clearly?
GK-2WA Response There are about 4200 kitchens in our colony out of which just a few handfuls are paying the AMC of Rs.100 per kitchen per month, which is grossly inadequate to meet our current operational expenses of around Rs.75 K p.m. This naturally has an adverse impact of our ability to fulfill the residents` expectations on security and sanitation. We are still running the show with meager income and the grants made by some benevolent residents. While the residents expect the moon from us, they are not willing to pay even the pittance by way of AMC as they do not perceive any value in this expense. The concept of AMC collection from the residents exists in all colonies and is running successfully at most places. If we compare the level of services provide by the RWA of the other colonies to their residents, we must also compare the level of AMC collection between those colonies and ours. As we had shared recently, we intend to put into place a comprehensive plan of securitizing our colony which will entail additional expenses. Not just this, we are also planning to augment our task force for cleaning the colony. As per our revised estimates, these initiatives will necessitate AMC collection of Rs.4500 per kitchen per month. This is not a significant cost for the residents compared to the huge financial and emotional loss that they may have to suffer if the security of the colony remains compromised. We urge the residents to get into the habit of making regular and timely AMC payments if they want us to serve them up to their levels of expectation
Q Why is cleaning of backlanes so irregular at present?
GK2 WA Response It takes about 5 mandays to clean a back lane in entirety and we have 52 backlanes in our colony. We at present have the strength of 4 persons to do this job. At this rate, each backlane can be cleaned at an average frequency of once per two months which is too irregular. Once the residents start paying the revised AMC, as explained by us above, we can press more resources to do this job and ensure every backlane is cleaned about once per fortnight
Q What is the state of fumigation in our colony?
GK2 WA Response We have had the entire colony fumigated on 7th Nov`22 and it will be our endeavor to get this activity repeated at frequent intervals.
