TDP leader Nara Lokesh in his Yuva Galam padayatra assured that such a skill upgradation for workers will take place if TDP is voted back into power in the 2024 Assembly polls. However, scepticism persists.
“Why would youngsters choose to work in Autonagar? There are neither facilities of value nor any opportunity for job growth,” alleges Babji.
Lack of facilities
Another one of Autonagar’s woes involves the poor state of the area’s infrastructure, including roads and drainage facilities.
Former ATA president Abdul Azeez had told local media in 2013 that while each successive government releases grants worth crores for infrastructural development, the Vijayawada Municipal Corporation (VMC) ends up spending only a meagre part of it on Jawahar Autonagar.
Raising a similar complaint at the recent Yuva Galam yatra, ATA general secretary MA Khaliq also brought up the fact that Autonagar suffers from the lack of a proper drainage system and needs better drinking water facilities, towards which the ruling government has allegedly taken no action.
While Prasad Sunkara, a resident of Jawahar Autonagar explains how TDP leader Gadde Anuradha, wife of Vijayawada East MLA Gadde Rammohan, invested around Rs 2 crores for the repair of roads, Rehman Baig, a mechanic in Autonagar says that infrastructural repair area has seen doesn’t amount to much. “Our business used to thrive even when the roads were bad. But now, the road quality is better, but business has faltered,” he says.
