'Industry should do its part to tackle Gurgaon traffic mess'

As this city comes to a halt post a heavy rainfall, industry body Assocham has urged the Haryana government to clear the 'monsoon mess' and asked the industry to earmark a percentage of their profit towards perking up city infrastructure.
Thousands of office goers and other commuters were today stranded here as heavy rains led to waterlogging on National Highway-8 causing massive traffic jams, forcing authorities to shut down schools in Delhi's satellite city while some offices too declared it an off.
The industry body conducted a survey of about 1,500 residents to assess the Millennium City's preparedness for monsoon season.

About 55 per cent of the total respondents complained of civic crisis as piles of garbage including construction and other waste end up coming on roads which create serious health hazards.
"The entire city traffic comes to a halt in Gurgaon whenever it rains thereby exposing serious lapses in urban planning and its execution," highlighted majority of the respondents, most of whom regretted shifting their base to the city for lack of proper drainage and sanitation.
Rain water stagnation on roads and lack of monitoring by traffic police at the junctions added to traffic jams, said majority of respondents.

Significant spurt of about 74 per cent in the population of Gurgaon during the decade of 2001-2011 i.E. From about nine lakh to over 15 lakh people, together with poor civic sense, resource crunch, dearth of workers in civic bodies and other factors are responsible for this situation, noted the survey.

"The city's civic administration needs to be professionalised and experts need to be hired owing to absence of accountability among municipal staff. Besides, financial structure of the municipal body needs to be overhauled owing to rampant resource crunch," said Assocham secretary general D S Rawat.
The global Fortune 500 companies together with various other national and global companies should spend some amount of profits in shoring up infrastructure across Gurgaon to enable the city to live up to its reputation of India's growth symbol, he added.