Mangaluru: Asking Mangaluru City Corporation officials to start putting up sign boards on identified roads and traffic junctions in the city in a week, Mayor Bhaskar K. said here on Tuesday that the agency chosen for the purpose cannot be given one month time for doing it.

Drawing the attention of the council at its monthly meeting to the lack of road sign boards, councillor Vijaya Kumar Shetty said that many travellers from outside found it difficult to identify roads and locations in the city. Many such travellers have been forced to ask pedestrians and shop keepers for directions.

Responding to it, K.S. Linge Gowda, Executive Engineer, city corporation, said that a Hyderabad-based agency has been given the work order to install road sign boards at an estimated cost of ₹ 1 crore. It would put up 150 sign boards. In addition, 22 gantry sign boards would be erected on the national highways within the jurisdiction of the corporation at an estimated cost of ₹ 1.50 crore. It would take a month to begin this work.

The Mayor said that the agency cannot take such a long time to begin work and it should begin in a week.

The former Mayor Jacintha Vijaya Alfred said that pushcart and petty shop vendors have occupied parking place on the recently widened four-lane road between Father Muller Hospital and Nandigudda. Private ambulances are being parked on the same road occupying parking space. Joining the issue, many councillors said that it has become the order of the day on other roads also and the corporation is not serious enough in evicting such vendors.

Leader of the Opposition Premananda Shetty said that pedestrians do not have footpaths to walk on and vehicles owners parking spaces as both in many places have been occupied by petty shops and other vendors.

Commissioner of the corporation Mohammed Nazir said that though the corporation has been evicting them now and then, they returned to occupy the same slots again after some days. The civic body faced dearth of staff to evict them again and again. If police booked cases against them, such instances would come down. The police too would have to act and cooperate to end the menace, he said.