Action Area 1

Spare us the din at midnight. That was Alok Satpathy’s plea to the NKDA authorities when his turn came to speak at the meeting Saturday. The representative of Animikha Housing Estate spoke bitterly of the noise created by the hawkers doing business in the illegal shanties lining their boundary wall.

“There are elderly and ailing folks who cannot sleep because of the ruckus they create. These shacks stay open till past 1.30am,” he said, requesting the officials to make them down shutters at a decent hour. While the street parallel to it had been cleared of the handful of hawkers who had been rehabilitated in the nearby market, the NKDA had stopped short of continuing the eviction drive on the chock-a-block pavement beside Animikha.

Several trucks are left parked on Street 48 next to the fenced-off AC Park behind DLF 1 in Action Area IA, alleged Gautam Das, a resident of AC Block. “This creates a cover behind which the drivers urinate, creating filthy odour in the area. Even worse things happen. On January 3, an eight-year-old girl was sexually assaulted using the trucks as cover in the evening. The guilty was caught red-handed when the girl cried out and he was handed over to the police,” he said.

The NKDA undertook a drive in the area a few days after the meeting and the number of trucks and app cabs has come down since then. “The officials who came on the drive said they would write to the local police station,” Das told The Telegraph Salt Lake on Wednesday.

Tapan Dam, the secretary of AE Block, objected to gate 2 of New Town Business Club being closed. “Those of us who stay in Street 111, 113 or 114 used to access Subhas Chandra Bose Udyan for morning walk through a slice of Vivek Tirtha which led straight to Subhas Chandra Bose Udyan, where the block’s Durga puja is held. But now there is a barrier in the middle of Vivek Tirtha stretch that blocks our access. And when we try to enter from the other side, there is a wall where the gate was. Street 71, which is the main road on the other side, is vital as we visit the Reliance Fresh outlet there, next to the Utsa complex, to procure our daily supplies.” Because of the blocked access, they were having to walk an extra kilometre along the business club periphery, they complained.

He also sought a designated playground, a community centre and a community market for the block. “In the absence of a market, illegal shops are on the rise,” he said.

Green Verges 5 and 6 were also not maintained well, he said. The solar lamps do not work and there are leakages in pipes inside both. “The water from Green Verge 5 seeps into our playground,” Dam said.

He also said that if complaints were lodged against the stacking of building materials on the road, the only development would be the builder getting to know and his men threatening the complainant.

He also suggested that spots be designated as feeding sites for dog lovers in the block so that random areas were not dirtied in the name of feeding, a point that the official promised to look into.

The BF Block representative complained that children were not allowed into Swapnabhor Senior Citizens’ Park while there was no children’s park elsewhere in the block as well. The NKDA authorities pointed out that the park was under Hidco. He also complained of motorcycles speeding on Smart Street.

CE Block secretary Alok Das complained of owners of four-cottah plots handing them over to promoters for multiple flats to come up. They even let out their garage space as showrooms or shops, and all the cars of the apartments in the building being parked on the streetside, clogging the carriageway.

Representatives of both BE Block and the CA-CD Welfare Association raised the matter of water accumulation in front of CB community market due to the leakage of underground sewerage lines, and at the corner of Street 165 and Major Arterial Road.

DA Block’s problems centre round the canal running behind the block. “It is dirty and the flow gets blocked due to dumping of waste. This leads to breeding of mosquitoes.” He requested for the canal to be cleaned. The tree library was also a hub of snakes, he said.

In DB Block, parking of buses by the New Town School on the road has led to the drivers and cleaners bathing, washing and drying clothes, urinating and cooking — all in the open. The authorities promised to speak to the school authorities.

The officials promised to draw up a standard operating procedure for the parking of school buses.

Action Area III

The secretary of the resident welfare association of Rosedale Garden, Alok Anand, highlighted the problem of traffic congestion in the area when the nearby Orchids International School gives over. “My office is in DLF 1 in Action Area 1 which should take barely 8-10 minutes to reach. But it takes me over half an hour to simply clear this jam at my doorstep. If there is a medical emergency, an ambulance will get stuck. The jam is from 8am to 10am and again around 1pm,” he complained.

He also raised the issue of hawker encroachment on the pavement in front of Karigari Bhavan. “Though it serves the neighbourhood with daily supplies, it is also a hazard. A year and half ago, a fire had broken out in those stalls,” he said.

He also requested for the backside of the complex to be fenced off along the periphery of the complex wall like it has been done around the Rosedale main gate. “New buildings are coming up across the road, for which the area is being frequented by lorry drivers and labourers. They use our wall to relieve themselves. There is a risk of tea-vending stalls cropping up along our boundary wall,” Anand said. He offered to maintain the fenced-off area as a garden by undertaking a tree plantation.

Sharing their plans of zero-landfill solid waste management in the near future by building three treatment plants in the three Action Areas, the NKDA officials urged residents for better segregation of domestic waste at source for the project to succeed. The representative of Uniworld City interrupted the official, alleging that while the association of 4,000 families duly deposited segregated waste, it was the NKDA’s waste collectors who ended up mixing the segregated waste.

The representative of Action Area IIIB sought a market and a children’s playground.

The issue of unauthorized hawkers reared when it was the turn of the Sukhobrishti and New Town Heights representatives to speak. While hawkers on the Sukhobrishti side had been removed to the permanent NKDA market further up the street, many were still sitting on the New Town Heights side. NKDA officials pointed out that more stalls were being built in the market and they too would be rehabilitated there.

Need for flu shots

The government health centres in New Town should stock influenza and pneumonia vaccines, which people can avail of on payment. The proposal was given at the meeting by Nikhilesh Biswas, an elderly resident of Rail Vihar. “After Covid, it has emerged as an important health precaution, especially for senior citizens. We can get it at private hospitals but for New Town residents, it will be much easier if we can get it in the urban primary health centres close by. We are ready to pay for it,” he told the officials.

The CEO asked the NKDA health-in-charge to do the needful for procurement. A letter is being sent to the CMOH office in Barasat to seek clearance as vaccines outside the mother-and-child immunisation schedule are not kept at the urban health centres.