GHMC Cracks Down on Officials in Graft Cases
Due to corruption in GHMC, a few tenders were transferred to HYDRAA
Hyderabad: The GHMC has finally moved to oust several officials either directly involved in corrupt practices or those who turned a blind eye to wrongdoing within their departments. The action includes filing criminal cases, issuing notices seeking explanations and referring erring officials to their parent departments for disciplinary action.
Recently, criminal cases were registered against those involved in issuing fraudulent birth and death certificates.
The anti-corruption drive gained momentum after GHMC commissioner R.V. Karnan and the corporation’s vigilance wing uncovered irregularities in the tenders related to monsoon emergency teams (METs). The tenders were found to be tailored to favour specific agencies. As a result, the entire tendering process was transferred to the HYDRAA.
Following this discrepancy, in addition to the action being initiated against the officials of the GHMC engineering wing, who are responsible for the MET tenders, the corporation is also taking steps to weed out corruption in the town planning, sanitation, and transport wings of the corporation.
Following the discovery, action was initiated against officials in the GHMC engineering wing responsible for the MET tenders. The corporation has also begun taking gradual steps to root out corruption in other wings, including town planning, sanitation and transport.
A source told Deccan Chronicle that the main corrupt practices in the town planning wing include ignoring illegal constructions and demanding bribes to issue no-objection certificates (NOCs). In the sanitation wing, irregularities include sweepers existing only on paper and payments made for sweeping machines that violated norms and failed to cover their designated routes.
In the transport wing, officials found a lack of clear auditing for vehicle-related payments. Moreover, some staff members have remained in the same postings for over two decades. “There are instances where an employee joined an area on the first day of his job and, decades later, is still working in the same place with retirement just a few years away,” said a source in the corporation.
