Hyderabad: Rs 81 crore-work yields craters

Hyderabad: The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation spent Rs 62 crore on road repairs at 411 locations after the monsoons in 2016, and again another Rs 19.51 crore in July-August 2017. 

Today, at the same locations, the roads are packed with not just potholes, but hollow cavities. A total of Rs 81.51 crore of taxpayers’ money has been washed away because the ‘road repair’ was nothing more than concrete brushing.

Contractors who had allocated the tenders by the GHMC engineering wing are wholly responsible for the present horrifying road network. 

They get away with using faulty bitumen road mix because officers in the municipal corporation, who are supposed to carry out quality checks, obviously do not do so. 

This month, the social platforms of the GHMC have been inundated with complaints by citizens, and most of them are about the condition of the roads. Here’s a sampling: Jakeer Hussain: “Road from Ambedkar Circle (Kondapur) to Hyderabad Central University via ICNOIA Road & Building is severely damaged. Everyday it is painful to pass over from there. There are holes in the road, unrepaired yet.”

Giridhar Reddy from Secunderabad: “The road beside Green Bawarchi Hotel lane is completely damaged and is very difficult even to walk. The bike travellers are having a very tough time as the potholes are very big and often their tyres are stuck in the potholes. As there is St. Anns School nearby even school-going children are forced to take longer route to go to school due to very bad condition of these roads. Even school bus drivers aren’t coming into this lane due to bad condition of these roads. Car tyres are seriously damaged due to the worst condition.”

Some of the worst roads are:

• The West Marredpally main road from Ganesh temple to Wellington Gate - AOC. There are hollow cavities at regular intervals and craters opposite the Reliance store. Commuters can’t avoid the potholes because there is nothing left of the bitumen road.
• Kapra (almost 22 internal colonies of High- tension road have made roads).
• The road from Vinayaknagar Mee Seva to Hanuman temple falling in Malkajgiri municipal limits.
• The roads from Borabanda to Hi-Tech city, PLR Luxury Homes, Attapur, Hyderguda.
• Anand Bagh, Malkajgiri, Ramanthapur, Uppal, Habsiguda, Madinaguda, Alwal, have 10-15 inch potholes due to leaking pipelines and water stagnation.