Hyderabad: Bumpy rides to stay as only 8 roads fixed

The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation has completed a mere 8 works out of 52 road repair works in 10 months.

Officials claim that the civic body cannot go ahead with road repair works until pending bills worth Rs 60 crore are released with immediate effect and Rs 80 crore by the month end, even though complaints are pouring in from commuters. Officials claimed that commuters have to bear the brunt till April. Despite the incompletion of works, civic body commissioner M. Dana Kishore announced during a recent review meeting held on March 9 that the corporation has already laid 550 km of road out of 833 km of BT roads.

According to highly-placed sources in the corporation, the civic body which has taken up road repair works under periodical preventive maintenance (PPM) at a cost of Rs 721 crore, later revised it to Rs 390 crore, and gave a work order of Rs 250 crore, misleading everyone. Sources said that the corporation has only totally completed about 250-lane km work, the remaining 200-lane km are still under progress and will be completed only after clearing pending bills.

The corporation has so far cleared bills worth Rs 100 crore for Rs 173 crore works.

After three months, it managed to clear bills worth Rs 21 crore on January 20. This apart, the



corporation is yet to clear bills worth Rs 80 crore for regular road maintenance apart from PPM works.

Sources said that the corporation would release funds worth Rs 100 crore based on property tax collection during April. Commuters will be subjected to bumpy rides until May.

They said that roads would certainly be damaged during the monsoon for which the corporation has been already preparing another plan to spend through a monsoon action plan which has instant road repairs to d fill potholes and craters.

Termed PPM, the work involves milling of the existing BT road, re-profiling and re-laying it.

This is ideally done once in five years. However, all that the GHMC has been able to do is mere patchwork over several stretches, which results in uneven bitumen pads in the middle of the road, leading to bumpy rides.

A senior GHMC official said that after finalising tenders, contractors immediately took up the work and laid single layer roads. With the eventual release of funds, they have completed eight works, 40 works are in progress and four works are pending, clearing bills.

The official said that the corporation has set a new target to complete the works by April if funds pertaining to road repairs are cleared on time.