HYDERABAD: The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) has decided to procure bicycles for its officials and ask them to commute to work once a week as part of a green initiative. The civic body has decided to purchase 20 bicycles immediately at a budget of Rs 1.5 lakh. The initiative will be taken up in collaboration with the Hyderabad Bicycle Club wherein the latter will sponsor 70 per cent of the total cost of the bicycles.
The bicycles would be given to the staff at the headquarters on priority and later the programme would be extended to all circle and zonal offices. Officials claimed that even sanitation workers could participate in the registration process to get a bicycle to commute to work. The corporation has decided to construct a permanent bicycle stand in the GHMC headquarters which would be later extended to all zonal and circle offices.
Officials said that the project was aimed not only to improve the health of the GHMC workers but also to reduce pollution levels in the city. They said that the initiative would inspire all other departments to either use a bicycle once a week or use public transport once every week. A senior GHMC official said that the Hyderabad Bicycle Club had come forward to bear 70 per cent of the cost of each cycle. The model and price of the bicycle was yet to be fixed. He said that a helmet would be mandatory for every person who rode a cycle from home to the workplace.
“The corporation will purchase 20 bicycles immediately which would be distributed to employees working from the circle office to GHMC headquarters. More cycles would be purchased in the near future,” he said. The bicycles would be used by the workers in a rotational manner, where they would pick the cycle from the stand in the office and commute to office on the next day. Officials would be asked to return bicycles so that other employees could commute through public transport,” he said.
The GHMC official said that 20 per cent of pollution would decrease as more than 30,000 officials would use bicycles and public transport on a daily basis in a rotational mode. The GHMC official said if the initiative inspired other governments and private organisations the pollution levels in the city would decrease drastically and that would realise the dream of chief minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao of making Hyderabad a green city.
Besides this, the corporation has decided to hire 20 electric vehicles (EV) at a cost of Rs 21,500 per month per vehicle against the current Rs 34,000 per vehicle per month, and to set up charging points at its headquarters and zonal offices. The vehicles will not only minimise air and sound pollution but also save the corporation a lot of money. The project comes under the National Mission on Electric Mobility, whereby all existing vehicles will be replaced with electric vehicles by 2030.
