Death Trap in Silchar: Building materials kept on public roads, the new normal?

Throughout the year, huge piles of sand and stones are often seen lying on Silchar roads. The winter season only adds to the woes as more and more building materials are kept on the roadside obstructing vehicular as well pedestrian traffic. Two years back, a teacher of Narsingh High School slipped and fell on a pile of stones kept on the roadside and died. Last year, an ambulance got damaged as it skidded on stones lying near the road at National Highway. There are many more incidents that did not take a turn for the worse but pushed the common man to extremely hazardous situations.

It has now become a trend to leave building materials by obstructing a side of the public road meant for pedestrians and vehicles. House owners leave huge piles of sand and pebbles whenever and wherever they wish to on the roads using carts. People who raise their voice against illegal occupation of roads are warned against by hooligans of the locality. No action has been taken by the administration against them till now.

The term of the elected municipality committee expired this year. However, the opposition had complained that Chairman Niharendra Narayan Thakur favoured and let his close relatives escape from legal action who were using building materials to obstruct roads. He refuted the allegations and blamed the common man for this problem.

The District Administration is now in-charge of Silchar municipality. The municipality is now running under Additional Deputy Commisioner Sumit Sattyavan. After taking charge of the municipality, during the rainy season, he himself visited the sewages and took the initiative to clear the clogged drains. The persisting waterlogging problem in Sonai Road has now been solved.

However, he does not seem to be bothered by the sand and stone piles kept on roadsides that have become a death trap for Silcharians during winter season. When questioned about it he replied “We can’t interfere in every matter. But if someone approaches us and says they are facing difficulty due to building materials kept on the road, we will take the initiative and remove them. However, strangely no one approached us directly so far. If people are not having any inconvenience then why should we poke our nose on such matters?”

Post lockdown, construction of flats and buildings in different parts of the city started in full swing. The works have started with full pace as construction activities were completely haulted during lockdown. This has only in turn increased the density of building materials kept on roadsides. Recently, stones were piled up on Hospital Road adjacent to Desobondhu Road. Leaving building materials like this in the middle of the road can cause deadly accidents at night. Luckily no such thing has happened till now but it cannot be said that the same won’t happen in future.

The common man never dares to speak about the issue and make a strong argument for themselves as in most of the cases influential people having political mileage are in charge of making the high rise buildings and flats.

The graph of death toll due to road accidents in the district is only getting skewed towards the left due to a sudden spike in the number of casualties, a trend which no economist would consider to be a good one. Almost every day someone is losing his life in an accident in some part of ​​the district or the other. There are various reasons for accidents but one of them can be contributed to the building materials kept on roads for sure. The administration itself has shown a bit of a helpless attitude in this regard, which gives courage to those who are doing these illegal things.