Battered roads: GHMC plays the blame game

Civic body says delay due to elections. This year, Mr. Reddy says the GHMC was ‘fixated with revenue collection and general election’ while remaining oblivious to the hardships awaiting the tax payers.

Even before the arrival of monsoon, the summer rains last week ended up exposing the bad road conditions in the city and suburbs. And the way the road stretches at different places got water-logged during two days of rains portend the worrying times ahead for denizens once the rainy season is here.

The blame is squarely laid on the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) for delays in taking up timely desilting that could have avoided the water logging in most instances. But then, the civic body staff shifts the blame on the elections works that had kept them tied down for the last month or so.

Monsoon action plan ready

Though the monsoon action plan, mainly for desilting works was drawn up well in advance, the works were not taken up immediately as the election code coming into force and tenders could not be called for, argues the civic body staff.

The TDP floor leader in the GHMC, Singireddy Srinivas Reddy points out that the desilting initiatives should have been taken up in the month of January itself as an estimated 5 lakh metric tonne of silt has to be removed.

“The engineering wing waits till the last moment and then everything goes wrong. Same thing has been happening every year and the civic body is yet to get wise on this count,” he says.

This year, Mr. Reddy says the GHMC was ‘fixated with revenue collection and general election’ while remaining oblivious to the hardships awaiting the tax payers. The road conditions have deteriorated during rains of just two days, he says pointing at the way the road stretches at Jambagh, Srinagar Colony and some internal roads of Jubilee Hills wore a battered look. The road connecting Botanical Garden with Gachibowli has gone worse as the dug up stretches at several places turned into pits of slush offering nightmarish times for the road-users.

The senior officials of the GHMC engineering wing says that not much damage to the road conditions was reported from across the city during the rains last week.

“However, the problem of water-logging and stagnation was there for which the desilting works are on,” says the GHMC Chief Engineer, T.Anjaneyulu.

GHMC Commissioner Somesh Kumar during his recent inspection pulled up the officials for delay in the works at 104 identified stagnation points of which, estimates were prepared for 57 works with a sanctioned amount of Rs.4.13 crore. He also expressed anger at the engineering wing for failing to start works which were below Rs.5 lakh estimate.