Traffic congestion has become a major cause of concern for the people and public representatives across the city due to various reasons such as poor road infrastructure, encroachment and others.
However, the city corporators appears to be lax when it comes to addressing the public grievances pertaining to the traffic issues at the right platform or coming up with solutions.
More than half of the corporators skipped the meeting on traffic problems convened by Mayor Koneru Sreedhar and in-charge civic chief and additional commissioner D. Chandra Sekhar along with Joint Commissioner of Police Kanthi Rana Tata on Monday while around 30 corporators and co-opted members, most of them from the Telugu Desam, took part in the meeting.
Lukewarm response
Mr. Sreedhar said expressed his displeasure on the lukewarm response to the meeting from the corporators. “Everyone appreciated when the meeting was announced. But only a few turned up to the meeting. That is the reason I don’t call for such coordination meetings,” he said.
He said he wrote letters seeking support of the Commissioner of Police once in 2015 and later in 2016 for convening coordination meetings to address the traffic issues that have been plaguing the city. Earlier, Mr. Rana said the movement of the NH-bound vehicles through the city had become a major problem and sought the cooperation of the civic body in ensuring good road infrastructure such as traffic signals, sign boards, zebra crossings and others at various locations of the city.
In the meeting, many corporators complained about road encroachments by vendors, hawkers, unauthorised parking, non-availability of cellar parkings and others. They also submitted a representation to Mr. Rana.
Financial hurdles
Mr. Sreedhar asked the Police Department to inform the council, which is the superior authority of the city, before removing medians for traffic adjustments. “The civic body is facing financial hurdles. I request the police to ensure that they spend at least half of the fine amounts collected by them for development of road infrastructure,” he said.
