The newly-elected office-bearers of Builders Association–Vijayawada, led by president A. Siva Reddy and general secretary R.V. Swamy, have urged the government to remove all bottlenecks to encourage builders to take up new projects.
They said that the authorities concerned were not releasing the plans taken under G.O. Ms. No. 423 and cleared under the Building Penalisation Scheme (BPS). The issue was already taken to the notice of the Chief Minister, and it would be pursued to get all BPS applications cleared.
They also wanted an important change to be made to G.O. Ms. No. 45, which stipulates that 20 per cent of built-up area in the case of sites above one acre should be reserved for economically weaker sections. They said this rule must be implemented for sites above 10 acres, because otherwise it will discourage builders from taking up big projects and townships and gated communities will only remain a dream for the city.
The builders reiterated their long-pending demand to delink Hyderabad from rest of the State while formulating building rules, as Hyderabad could not be compared to any other city in the State. Talking to reporters, Mr. Siva Reddy said that the construction industry that was already reeling under unfavourable political climate was suffering much more because of several fees and charges, including service tax and impact fee.
Downtrend
Gadde Rajaling, the outgoing president, said that there was a marked decline in construction activity in the region in the last three years, which was due to a variety of factors, including economic recession, political agitations and rise in inputs costs. While in 2007 alone as many as 400 new building plans were obtained, the total number in the last three years put together did not cross 30.
Mr. Rajaling maintained that Telangana could never be a factor, because what was needed was just political and administrative stability.
He felt that development of good infrastructure in and around Vijayawada would encourage new projects to come up.
All the other newly elected office-bearers – vice-presidents Abdulla Baig, K. Santharam Prasad, joint secretaries M. Rama Koteswara Rao, P. Vijaya Rama Raju and treasurer K. Rajendra – were present.
