Every year it happens unfailingly. Roads getting damaged as soon as the eagerly awaited monsoon sets in and utter lack of coordination between the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) and the Roads & Buildings Department in proper road maintenance.
Both the local body as well as the government department present a pathetic picture as roads in each other’s jurisdiction are mired with potholes and craters, if not inundations during a downpour. Fact is the R&B department is supposed to be looking after maintenance of some of the busiest thoroughfares, but has been found wanting even as the municipal corporation gets plastered. Take any main road in Begumpet, Mehdipatnam, Secunderabad, Tarnaka, Uppal, Banjara Hills, Jubilee Hills and so on, all these ‘belong’ to the R&B – up to 180 km in total length, with as many as six executive engineers stationed in the plum city posting. Yet, little to show.
This year the tragic death of an Intermediate student near Anand theatre on the S.D. Road (R&B’s) led to a huge public uproar.
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Every year, the municipal corporation does repairs and even re-carpets some of these stretches following a public outcry and media onslaught, senior municipal officials, cagey about being identified, point out. “We have been spending up to Rs.22 crore for repairing R&B roads every year and sought reimbursement too from the government for the same. Unfortunately, nothing has come our way.”
The civic body had also sought the R&B roads to be transferred to it with a caveat that a budgetary grant of Rs.22 crore be provided annually. Nothing has come of it two years down the line.
Senior municipal officials say that an offer to form a separate wing within GHMC to maintain R&B roads was mooted. “It did not progress because of union issues,” they aver. Whatever, lack of a single road authority is not helping matters, officials admit.
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