Hyderabad: The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation's ground level staff have been minting money through road repairs and other works during the festive season.
This has been clearly evident in the number of road repairs and potholes identified by three independent bodies including the GHMC, the traffic police and law and order police in Ganesh immersion routes. The corporation claimed that there are more than 4,000 potholes and several road damages while traffic police have identified mere 178 potholes and 189 road damages.
A part from this, the law and order police have also identified road damages in 421 places which include road damages and potholes. These numbers were officially submitted by both departments and asked the corporation to repair the stretches on priority.
However, corporation officials claimed that the road repairs identified by the police department were only rough estimates and it has already done a detailed investigation to identify the repair to ensure smooth conduct of immersion.
Highly placed sources in the corporation said that road repairing works as part of festival arrangements always been a great source income to the staff as there is no standard mechanism to maintain transparency and accountability.
Since several years, the staff have submitting manipulated numbers to their higher authorities who cannot verify them, since the arrangements/repairs have to been taken up in a shortest period of time to avoid criticism from the public.
The corporation has earmarked '9.98 crore for 170 works during the current festive season.
According to the official data the traffic police have identified 113 potholes and 100 road damages which fall under the GHMC's jurisdiction, six potholes and 1 in HMRL jurisdiction, 42 potholes and 69 road damages in Hyderabad Road Development Corporation Limited's jurisdiction, 15 potholes and 18 road damages in SCB and two potholes and one damage on national highways.
The law and order police officials have identified road damages, which include potholes in 89 locations in central zone, 55 locations in east zone, 73 locations in west zones, 121 locations in north zone and 83 locations in south zone.
However, the corporation officials claimed that till date they have filled 7,600 potholes and laid 70 kilometres road in the procession routes.
When the issue was taken to the notice of GHMC commissioner M Dana Kishore, he said that the corporation has been geo-tagging the potholes and road damages in order ensure the transparency and assured city road would have a facelift by November.
