Hyderabad: Visitors to the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation office often struggle to find space to park their vehicles.
Though GHMC’s main office building has parking space, it is not enough even for its own officers, leave alone the visitors. As a result, visitors park their vehicles on the main road, from Liberty to Adarshnagar via GHMC office, and quite often end up paying challan to the traffic police.
Also, the parking of vehicles on either side of the road causes traffic jams regularly on this route. “The GHMC comes down hard on citizens for not following building rules, even those regarding parking space. However, its own main office building lacks parking space. The civic body should first set its own house in order,” said K. Rama Krishna, a visitor to the GHMC office.
Social activist and advocate Venu Gopal said the municipal corporation has grand plans of constructing multi-level parking lots at various places in the city, but lacks a parking space in its own backyard.
“The current GHMC building and its parking was sufficient before the formation of Greater Hyderabad. Now, officials, citizens and corporators from all over Greater Hyderabad keep visiting the office,” he said.
Even GHMC commissioner Somesh Kumar agreed that there is a major parking space crunch in the GHMC building. “We are short of space not just in terms of parking, but accommodation for our officers and staff as well. Recently, the Standing Committee had cleared a Rs 11-crore proposal to construct a seven-storeyed complex in the GHMC main office premises.
Of the nearly 80,000 sft built-up area of this building, nearly 40,000 sft is proposed to be dedicated towards parking space,” he said and added the project proposals would be placed before the GHMC council and, the-reafter, the government for final approval. The new building will come up on the western side of the existing building.
