The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) plans to ensure uniform development and maintenance of roads has been hit with snags in the process of shifting the Roads & Buildings (R&B) stretches to the civic body.
After years of efforts and lots of persuasion, the GHMC finally got the R&B’s city roads sub-division shifted to it on working arrangement basis on March 29. It was agreed on placing the services of city cadre staff including a deputy executive engineer and two assistant executive engineers at the disposal of the civic body with immediate effect.
However, according to the GHMC officials, the R&B engineers had not reported to them so far, almost 45 days after the ‘with immediate effect’ orders. “Our senior officials enquired about the engineers recently and were told that they had gone on leave. Apparently, there is still some resistance in the department on working with us,” said an official.
Of the 6,780 km road network that criss-cross the GHMC jurisdiction, 6,480 km are with the municipal body and the rest under R&B department and National Highways Authority.
Each year, as rains leave the city roads battered, the municipal corporation ends up getting blamed for the conditions that technically were not its responsibility. “To ensure uniform maintenance, we persuaded the R&B department for years and the issue even went to the level of Chief Minister. Now the shifting has been agreed to, but no assigned officials from them have come to us,” he said.
GHMC Commissioner Somesh Kumar had in fact sought the entire Hyderabad division of the R&B brought under the civic body supervision, but the department only conceded one sub-division.
“Though we sought more of their staff and also budget, they only gave a small team. We see it as a good beginning and will try to improve road conditions,” he said. On the engineers not reporting to the municipal corporation, Mr.Somesh Kumar said it would be checked and issues if there were any, would be sorted out.
