Engineer Azeem Uddin asked the GHMC about the misuse of OSRT through an RTI plea, but to no avail
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Hyderabad: The Off Site Real Time (OSRT) monitoring system (similar to a camera) has turned into a source of income for some GHMC town planning officials. These gadgets were procured at a cost of Rs 58 lakh for town planning inspectors to take pictures of illegal buildings or deviations and to upload it on the GHMC website, so that the circle or zonal office can issue a notice and demolish the illegal structures. But now GHMC officials use this as a tool to extract bribes.
OSRT is a mobile governance tool that utilises GPS/GPRS connectivity to monitor civic activities. The aim behind introducing OSRT was to monitor things like sanitation (dumper bins, street sweeping, attendance and anti-larval operations), street lighting (on-off status), parks (maintenance & attendance), town planning (monitoring building permits, violations) across the 625 sq km area, 150 wards, five zones and 18 circles of GHMC.
GPRS technology allows cell phones to capture real time images of public servants at work or public sites under inspection, with the date, time and location of the picture. Engineer Azeem Uddin, a resident of Mehdipatnam who asked the GHMC about this in an RTI plea has not received any reply. He said, “After the purchase of the OSRT system, in the last five years how many unauthorised buildings have the town planning department identified and uploaded. They have not done their basic homework.
“An officer is allotted to inspect buildings for 4 hours a day to identify encroachments, deviations and illegal structures, capture the structure’s image and upload it on the website but ins-tead they harass builders and collect huge amounts by threatening them. It is wrong on the builders’ part to deviate from plans. But, it is the duty of the officer to go by rules. By this they are encouraging violators.”
( Source : deccan chronicle )
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