Hyderabad: Garbage graft forces civic transfers

Hyderabad: Corruption in garbage has reached a new high. The nexus between Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) officials and politicians has destabilised the civic bo-dy’s transportation wing, which transfers garbage from the city to the Jawa-harnagar dump yard. The transportation of garbage is big business for officials and netas ever since the inception of the GHMC. The politician-officialdom nexus has resulted in the transfers of three additional commissioners and for-ced a recently-appointed officer not to take charge.

Highly-placed GHMC sources say the garbage transported to the dump yard is about 4,000 metric tonnes (mts). However, flawless paper work and political patronage helped that swell to 6,500 mts. Politicians even forced successive commissioners to endorse the same and announce it via public platforms. The corporation pays `1,341 per mt to Ramky Enviro Engineers to transport garbage to the dump yard.

Sources alleged that a political leader has stakes in the transportation wing. Corrupt officials, they said, have swindled `3.35 crore on a daily basis on garbage transportation, which is shared among field-level, mid-level and top-rung officials — along with the political leader. Three additional commissioners who followed former additional commissioner N. Ravi Kiran were not allowed to stay in place for more than two months.

Sources said that the high-level corruption in the transportation wing caught the attention of Municipal Administration and Urban Development (MAUD) minister K.T. Rama Rao, who appointed R Upender Reddy as the new additional commissioner for transportation.

This did not find favour with the politician involved in the swindling, who harshly took the administrator to task. Amid high drama, the newly-appointed additional commissioner went on leave. Citizens are bearing the brunt as sanitation pick-up has going from bad to worse with each passing day.