Hyderabad continues to remain tolerant to bad amenities

Hyderabad: While the entire country debated intolerance, in 2015, Hyderabadis continued to remain tolerant to the bad services provided by the state government through its civic agencies. Be it bad roads, no water supply, traffic, pollution, overflowing sewerage or animal menace, residents bore it all stoically. This despite the fact that the total property tax collected by the GHMC was the highest at Rs 1,105 crore this year. Based on the number of complaints, the city's top 10 issues are:

1. Water Supply — Areas don’t get supply over 10 days, low pressure, leakages.

2. Pollution – vehicular, industrial and lake pollution.

3. Traffic - At areas where Metro pillars have come up, on internal roads and residential colonies

4. Road - Broken roads, potholes and dug up roads

5. Illegal construction of building hampering neighbors

6. Dog menace - increasing stray population and dog bite cases

7. Garbage - Burning, dumping, no clearance

8. Encroachments - Roads, lakes, parks, community halls, nalas

9. Drainage issues - Overflowing, clogged, no outlets

10. Bad administration by the municipal agencies.

Of the Rs 9037.43 crore spent by the GHMC during 2010-15, Rs 2,168 crore was allocated to 150 wards of Greater Hyderabad and the rest was spent at the head office level for council meetings, corporator tours, major road development and new schemes. This means only 23 per cent of the total funds were spent on ward development (civic works).

Divisions with less population and wards with high populations got the same amount.

Also, the City Water Board authorities have been denying new water connections to residents living in internal areas of the Outer Ring Road though water connection is a basic right of citizens.

Meanwhile, there is a serious water crisis in the city, especially in the merged municipalities where the supply is once in 15 days. While several scams came to light in 2015 with regard to various corporations and its agencies, residents continued to pay their taxes without questioning. Some of the top scams that were revealed through RTI concerned:

As per an RTI report, Rs 2298.33 crore (Rs 608.11 crore for road repairs and Rs 1,690.22 crore for road development) was spent during 2009-2015. In spite of that, the roads today are in a far worse condition than before. Similarly, an amount of Rs 675.44 crore was spent on drainage and sewerage works in the Greater Hyderabad area, leaving out the Old Municipal Corporation of Hyderabad area (the merged municipalities). But still, the drains overflow on to the roads.

GHMC and the Water Board have collected Rs 131 crore for construction of rainwater harvesting pits in the city. Unfortunately, both the civic bodies combined have spent only Rs 6.82 crore out of this amount.

A Rs 500 crore scam was detected in the GHMC adverting wing. As per records, 2,400 hoarding are permitted in the city and revenues of over '100 crore are generated from those hoardings. But there are more than 6,000 unauthorised hoardings in the city. These hoarding generate Rs 500 crore income for the GHMC.

The Vigilance wing came across a Rs 100-crore scam in the GHMC’s transport wing. In all quotations, if a vehicle was purchased for '10 lakh, the repair bills for the same vehicle the next year was around Rs 30 lakh.

In the pretext of vehicle repair, officials of the transport wing had billed the GHMC close to Rs 30 crore. Over the last six years, over '100 crore was spent on “repairs” of new vehicles. GHMC in the last five years spent Rs 363 crore on fuel for vehicles.

Out of Rs 7 crore funds received from the central government towards the Swachh Bharath mission, not a single toilet was constructed in the city. Instead plastic mobile toilets have been placed in various localities using GHMC funds. A percentage of the central funds were instead used for travel of an MLA and a municipal officer to inspect other cities.

The city has only 186 built toilets and 50 bio urinals that were recently installed by the GHMC authorities.

While it was approved that the GHMC would set up 1000 mobile toilets in the city, so far only 50 have been installed.