GHMC chief not keen to answer people

Hyderabad: An urban conglomeration, the fourth largest in the country, with a population of over 10 million people, under siege because of a collapse of its civic infrastructure and maintenance systems, still gets nothing from the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporations (GHMC) save denials, deployment of dilatory tactics and criminal neglect of people’s complaints, and sentiments.

When Deccan Chronicle spearheaded the voice of the common people and citizens of the city through its Speak Out columns, which the paper enhanced to two full pages to air the maximum possible views of the suffering people of Hyderabad, in the form of their complaints, the GHMC chief was requested to deploy a responsible resource to respond to the queries of the people of the city.

D.S. Lokesh Kumar, new GHMC commissioner, sources in the corporation point out, has been since his appointment to the role in late August this year, reprioritising the activities in the body but responding to, or even acknowledging, people’s civic complaints, is not a priority.

When reached out to by DC’s Speak Out team several times to get someone responsible within the GHMC to respond to the issues raised by our readers, Mr Kumar never took a call, or returned it.

When a formal request was sent to Mr Kumar on September 23 to take our reader’s voices seriously and start addressing the issue, he chose to ignore the message, which was: “We at Deccan Chronicle have been voicing complaints of people on civic issues for GHMC for a while now but no one from your side is giving replies. Kindly depute a resource to start replying to people’s grievances on a regular basis.”

The GHMC chief, who some officers working in the organisation said does not give adequate importance to people’s complaints, or the official app on which citizens raise tickets, has chosen to ignore repeated requests, before finally giving a vague promise to have someone from the public relations to respond.

Mr Kumar, as reported earlier in reports in DC, one day chose to appoint himself as a doctor and gave a certificate of health to people’s problems, by claiming that the city was not suffering from a dengue epidemic and doctors were not right in their diagnosis. In another instance, he claimed that the population of the mosquitoes had drastically reduced, without any factual substantiation.

When he was today again contacted, being reminded that it had been 17 days since his promise but no one from the GHMC had replied to even a single query of our readers, now numbering hundreds, the officials responded with their first response, relating to choking drainage in Kachiguda. The action taken report (ATR) from executive engineer, Amberpet, GHMC, said, “Regarding choking drainage in Kachiguda ward, circle 16, above uncovered SW drain slab also doesn’t belong to Basant Colony. There are no SW drain pipelines in entire colony in Kachiguda and existing roads have natural road slopes to drain rainwater.”

When probed, the official who was deputed to respond, confessed that the reply was procured through WhatsApp group responses and that he was not sure if any official had actually gone to the spot.

Another officer handling the GHMC app threw more light on the subject, saying, “we are told to close complaints by giving such answers. Client’s location was not found. The complaint relates to another department. The drain or road was already repaired, among many others.”

When reached out to yet again, the GHMC commissioner, who feels people’s complaints are not important, has again promised to have all citizen’s issues published in DC answered.

The Deccan Chronicle is committed to ensuring that the voice of every citizen of our city is heard, officials respond and act, and we will continue to keep a vigilant eye to ensure the replies are not evasive or stonewalling techniques, but truly addressed.