Hyderabad: “A major chunk of Hyderabad roads that are damaged belong to the Road and Buildings department, State and National Highway authorities,” said the city Mayor on Thursday. Out of the 625 km of roads falling under Hyderabad’s jurisdiction, 36.40 km belongs to the R&B department, 157.78 km are intercepting state highway roads and 98.70 km are under the NHA.
Even the major connectivity from PVNR Express Highway till HICC, passing through Sarojini Devi Hospital, belongs to the R&B department. During former chief minister Kiran Kumar Reddy’s regime, the GHMC, at a Cabinet meet, had asked these departments to hand over the city roads so that the entire Hyderabad connectivity could be handled by it. However, the documents haven’t moved yet, said GHMC authorities.
Applications have been pending with the R&B department for the last eight months for a part of the junction from Aramgarh to Owasi School to be turned into an expressway by the GHMC by allotting a budget of around Rs 40 crore. Mayor Mohammed Majid Hussain said that though the GHMC is held responsible for every pothole and water stagnation, more than 300 kilometres of roads under the GHMC limits are looked after by other departments.
Since the GHMC has adequate funds, it had asked the R&B department to hand over city units so that all roads in Hyderabad could be handled by the Corporation. Former CM Kiran Kumar Reddy too had given a green signal. However nothing has happened yet.
Though the Municipal Corporation has also submitted a segregated report of roads belonging to each government department, there is no coordination.
The transfer will only take a week to complete and it is not a financial burden on the GHMC to maintain the additional roads, the Mayor said.
