Hyderabad: Environmentalist S. Jeevananda Reddy spent a scary weekend when fires broke out in a park and began spreading towards his house at night. He said the fires had started on the nights of April 2 and 3 after GHMC staff heaped dry leaves and set fire to it.
Dr Jeevananda Reddy, a former UN chief technical adviser and convener of the Forum for a Sustainable Environment, stays at Road No. 78, Jubilee Hills, Phase 3 adjacent to the park.
He wrote in a complaint to the GHMC that he woke up at about 11.30 pm on April 2 to see the fire advancing towards his house. “I doused the fire with water from my sump,” he said. He went back to sleep, but the fire did not die out. “When I woke up again at 1.30 am, the fire was close to my house. I put it out again,” he wrote to the GHMC.
He said that he noticed a fire on Sunday in the park and put it out. “If I had not woken up, my house would have been burnt along with me and my wife,” Dr Reddy said.
He said the GHMC had removed garbage bins, and locals were dumping garbage everywhere. He said the fire was not the first. “I once called the fire service who put out the fire. But they told me that this was not their duty,” he said. Dr Reddy said he had filed many complaints with GHMC officials who visited the spot. The garbage burning is still on, he said.
Residents said that people dump garbage at the park even though a vehicle comes to collect garbage every day, and residents pay Rs 100 per month. The GHMC central zone commissioner was not available to comment on Dr Jeevananda Reddy's complaint.
