Diwali gift: Residents give back bus stop its sparkle

BENGALURU: In a rare Deepavali gift to Bengaluru, a group of over 60 members of We Can – a volunteer group supported by the residents welfare association of the Godrej Woodman Estate (GWE), a gated community in Hebbal, along with over 40 other locals, both children and adults – joined hands to clean a bus stop that was in disuse and had turned a black spot in the locality, leaving it spick and span.
Tejaswi Uthappa, blogger, freelance writer and resident at GWE, said, “A public bus stop next to our gated community had become more of a dumpyard as it wasn’t being used by buses as well as commuters. It was misused by stray vehicles and garbage vans, besides by residents who dumped their garbage in the public amenity. We joined hands to clean the bus stop and restore access, making it usable by buses and commuters, as a Diwali gift to our beloved city.”
“Citizens have to play an active part in governance if we want to see the change we seek and this initiative is the third citizen based drive we have undertaken to improve our local area. We have tried to involve the local resident welfare associations (RWAs) to take civic issues forward with BBMP through partnership of citizens with local administration,” she added.
The drive was supported by BBMP and septuagenarian NS Ramakanth, who became the Bangalore Man of the Year for his civic activism and Let’s Be The Change, a city-based NGO run by a group of youngsters to fix several black spots in the city and beautify them.
Hari Babu, health inspector at BBMP who was part of the cleaning drive, said: “The public bus stop was in a pathetic state, all filled with garbage, cattle wastes, rejected vehicles and had become a potential breeding spot for mosquitoes and flies. We are thankful to the residents for their wonderful initiative in association with BBMP to clean the area. Following the drive, the dirty bus stop now looks like a sparkling brand new bus stop.”
“We will now pursue with Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) to regularise the bus stop so that the public amenity is not misused further and it can add convenience to commuters as well,” added Tejaswi.