Hyderabad: The GHMC has chalked out a plan to clear the bottlenecks at nalas at 47 locations in the city where water flow gets impeded markedly, leading to flooding of streets during monsoon. It has earmarked Rs 230 crore to dredge out the nalas and widen them before the onset of monsoon, but the plan has few takers up till now.
Six months into the plan, and the corporation has initiated works at only 15 locations. And not one contractor evinced interest in bidding for tenders for works at 20 other locations.
The GHMC conducted a survey and identified long stretches of nalas at various places in the city, totalling a length of a massive of 365 km, need to be cleaned up, an official said.
It also identified upwards of 1,000 unauthorised and authorised structures that would have to be demolished to widen the nalas.
In all, tenders have been finalised for 28 locations and work is in progress at 15 locations. The corporation has also managed to clear about 35 structures in six months and the work is on at a brisk pace in South Zone, but not so much in Central and West zones.
A senior GHMC official said, private bidders were not ready to take up nala widening works because they find the project unviable. He attributed the slow progress of work to severe resistance from the public to demolitions.
The widening project has been on GHMC’s to-do list for the past two decades as encroachments along nalas have been choking them up increasingly.
Several colonies too have come up over the years. A detailed project report was also prepared a decade ago to survey the primary, secondary and tertiary nalas, their status and what was required to be done.
The consultant’s report said that a remodeling of all nalas was required at the cost of Rs 12,000 crore.
