Rainwater from Metro tracks damaging roads, says GHMC

Hyderabad: The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation is planning to impose fines on the Hyderabad Metro Rail Limited for damaging the city’s roads.

Civic officials said that the Metro Rail authorities have been directly discharging the rain water on to the roads, causing water logging along the Metro corridors, which in turn, damage the macadam layer.  Because of this, the life of newly-laid roads under periodical preventive maintenance (PPM) has been reduced. If not curtailed immediately, the `600 crore spent on the maintenance of the roads would go down the drain, they said.

According to highly placed sources in the corporation, the civic body has been preparing guidelines for discharging of rainwater. It is also planning to impose a minimum of `25,000 fine based on the quantity of water discharged and the damage caused to the roads.

The corporation will not only penalise private and public establishments, but also government agencies that violate the guidelines.

During a preliminary survey, the GHMC has found that the HMRL has been directly discharging water into the city roads instead of channelling them to the storm water discharge network.

Sources said that at some places, the rainwater is being directly discharged on to the roads while at other places it is used for maintaining plants on the medians. The excess water from these medians spills on to the roads during monsoon.

A senior GHMC official said that under the PPM works, the corporation has taken up road repairs at an estimated cost of `250 crore.

This apart, the official said that the Telangana State Industrial and Infrastructure Corpor-ation (TSIIC) and Hydera-bad Road Development Corporation have also laid roads spending `450 crore. These arterial roads mainly pass through the metro corridors. The official said that several government departments were also responsible for damaging city roads.

The official said that the corporation would issue a notice to the HMRL either to rectify the rainwater discharge system immediately, failing which the fine would be imposed on it. “Due to the apathy of private, commercial and government establishments, the civic body has been facing citizens’ ire for road damages during the monsoon,” the official said.

The GHMC would soon release guidelines that will make everybody accountable for the damage to roads, the official said, adding that the civic body could spend crores of rupees on laying roads and carrying out constant repairs when even government departments go on damaging them.