City spends crores for its representatives’ comfort
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Hyderabad: The five-year term of the previous 150-member GHMC council cost the exchequer Rs 15.49 crore. The expenditure was on their phone bills, lunch during council meetings, study trips, laptops and medical insurance. Other arrangements like corporator’s office in the GHMC building and laptops have emptied the corporation’s coffers.
During the GHMC council meetings, lunch cost Rs 2,000 per plate on one day. The corporators spent Rs 72 lakh for medical insurance and Rs 1.86 crore on phone bills.
With the project of paperless offices, the corporators procured laptops with GHMC funds.
Overall with the development funds of Rs 690 crore, all the corporators spent Rs 239 crores, and more than Rs 450 crore development funds lapsed.
The study tours every year which made no difference to the city cost Rs 3.66 crore as the corporators went to Shimla, Gangtok, Darjeeling and Kashmir.
Every year, Rs 1.5 crore is spent towards corporators’ study tours — Rs 80,000 on each corporator — but so far not a single plan recommended as a result of these trips have been executed. Contaminated water, overflowing drains, defective pipelines, battered roads and piles of garbage are proof of this.
From stay in 5-star accommodations to food and travel, the GHMC footed all the bills of the corporators and their spouses. This year expenditure per spouse came to around Rs 45,000.
“While a subsidised meal given to poor costs '5 per meal. The same subsidised meal of Rs 5 should have been served to corporators, in order to monitor and improve the quality of subsidized meal. This appr-oach would have saved '35 lakh to the GHMC exchequer,” Lok Satta party leader Devi Prasad said.
( Source : deccan chronicle )
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