Hyderabad: The engineers of Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) on Tuesday went on a pen-down strike and also decided to avail the optional holiday on December 26 and go on mass casual leave on December 27, bringing to a halt all road repair and other construction works in the city. They
are protesting against corporators targeting engineer-in-chief Dhan Singh in particular and engineers in general. The protest, evoked severe criticism from citizens who said that the engineers should first fix and repair all the roads, maintain quality in construction and then go on protest. Action should be taken against engineers if roads got damaged early, they said.
“It is the responsibility of engineers to ensure that quality is maintained while repairing and constructing roads. Not a single road in the city is free of potholes. The bitumen is totally missing on some stretches.
Engineers are not holy cows and are not above criticism. While we don’t support the corporators, they are the eyes and ears of people and have every right to question the engineers on behalf of the citizens,” said social activist Venu Gopal. The MIM floor leader in GHMC, Nazeeruddin, said while everyone has a right to protest, the corporators were only trying to get the public works done.
“When cement roads are laid at midnight, executive engineers usually are not present on the site. How can quality roads be expected in such a case? Roads were laid for biodiversity (COP-11) and I think they have been stolen. I say stolen because I can’t find bitumen on many stretches,” he said.
GHMC engineers’ leader M. Kishan, said, “It is the system’s failure. Engineers are being used for non-technical or non-engineering works like enumeration duties, tax collections... Confine us to only engineering works and then it makes sense if they are questioned about quality of work.”
