It is a breeze to drive on Hyderabad roads in the night after restrictions on movement are enforced by police. Long stretches of roads in the city appear like runways in airports after the Comprehensive Road Management Programme work by the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation. At some places like Masab Tank, Shaikpet and Mehdipatnam, work is still going on with some restrictions on vehicular movement. But away from the smooth tarmac-like stretches, danger lurks in other locations where trenches have been dug for laying cables and pipelines.
A few days ago when it rained in the afternoon, water flowed out of the unfinished channel near Old Top Khana on the Nizamshahi road and flooded the street with filth, debris and foul water. “Luckily our shop is at a higher level and there was no damage.
The whole area had bad smell due to the filth that dried up,” said one of the shopkeepers in the locality. According to the citizens in the area, work has been going on at the small bridge near the abandoned police station for two years but has not been completed.
A similar situation exists where a pipeline has been laid under the road on the Old Bombay Highway bringing the sewage from Durgam Cheruvu. It was on this stretch of the road that citizens of western part of the city had to face the brunt of urban flooding over the past two years. On Friday, as normal working hours have been restored in many offices and with almost all the shops opening up, traffic turned into a mess on the road connecting Shaikpet to Biodiversity Junction.
The stretch of road has become narrow as it has been dug up for laying cables. In the Dargah area, outside the perimeter wall of Laxman Bagh temple, the stretch of road has become so narrow that only two vehicles can pass abreast. The result: traffic got backed up till the Shaikpet Junction on Friday. The road stretch connecting Mindspace Junction to Gachibowli-Miyapur too has been dug up, affecting flow of traffic.
