Hyderabad: A year ago, Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao picked up a broom and lifted garbage at Parsigutta in the city and launched the state’s ambitious civic programme Swachh Hyderabad. A year down the line, statistics reveal that the city is far from clean.
Mr Rao announced that Swachh Hyderabad drives would be held on the 10th of every month. A logo was created, an FB page was set up, a song was composed and a CD was released.
After announcing that they would spend Rs 200 crore on Swachh Hyderabad — the Centre gave Rs 75 crore as special aid — the government and GHMC seems to have abandoned the programme.
The city was divided into 425 zones including 17 industrial and eight cantonment areas. Each zone was handed over to a patron. A review by this newspaper reveals that most patrons rarely if ever returned to their wards.
Even Parsigutta, that the Chief Minister had selected, lies in a state of neglect.
“Despite having a distinct and unique identity, Hyderabad lacks a mechanism for sanitation and cleanliness. To bridge this gap, the Telangana state government has launched the Swachh Hyderabad campaign to turn Hyderabad into a clean and green city,” Mr Rao had said on the occasion on May 16 last year.
Mr Rao returned to the area two months later, in July 2015. Except for a small stretch of BT road laid ahead of the Raghav Function Hall and a structure in front of the Parsigutta Nala, no work has been carried out. The condition of the road leading to the Tower of Silence is pathetic. He had announced that Parsigutta would be turned into another Banjara Hills.
Mr B.T. Srinivas, general secretary of the United Federation of Resident Welfare Associations, said that immediately after Swachh Hyderabad began, teams were constituted which interacted with colony associations and collected data on civic problems. Major issues were prioritised and money was sanctioned to address them.
The common issues were drainage overflow or leakage, damaged roads, non-functioning streetlights, lake cleaning and providing ration and pension cards. The data ran into hundreds of papers and was submitted to the Chief Minister. Some works were grounded. “The failure was that the patrons did not return to the areas to check if the problems were solved.”
Mr Srinivas wanted an audit of works executed. Prof. J.N. Naidu, environmentalist and expert in solid waste management, said that the government had announced that 6,000 volunteer change agents would be deployed to ensure that the city becomes clean and green. “When will they be deployed,” he asked.
The city needs garbage-free colonies and roads, no open defecation and safe water. “What we see is piles of garbage, overflowing drains, debris-filled streets and plastic strewn on roads,” he said.
Toilets: The Centre has ranked Hyderabad among the top six cities that fare poorly on the cleanliness scale. Slum development activist V. Sudhakar said, “The Sama-gra Kutumba Survey said that 35,000 houses do not have toilets. According to the GHMC urban community development wing, each toilet costs Rs 12,000. If the government had spent Rs 42 crore of the Rs 75-crore Central aid, every household in Hyder-abad would have had toilets.” The city has 86 public toilets, and more are being added, and 48 Sulabh complexes.
Garbage: A GHMC report on May 13 said 923 of the 1,116 open garbage points had been removed. GHMC commissioner Dr B. Janardhan Reddy was irked by deputy commissioners failing to oversee the shifting of the waste. The GHMC has introduced the two-bin system and introduced auto-tippers.
An official from LIC’s health insurance division at Abids, who did not want to be named, said, “Garbage is being deposited near our office opposite Surya Theatre. It is the duty of the GHMC to look into such matters and keep the city clean.”
Construction debris: Thousands of tonnes of construction debris are dumped within the city, when the designated site is the construction and demolition waste yard. But then, the GHMC does not have a C&D waste yard at all.
As per rules, construction debris cannot be dumped in the garbage dumping yard, as it has concrete, plaster, broken bricks and silt. The plan to set up a C&D yard remains on paper. More than five years ago, the GHMC had proposed setting up the yard, but nothing much happened after it identified a 10-acre site.
