The Deccan Chronicle 09.09.2010
GHMC sits on `6cr for roads
Hyderabad, Sept. 8: The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation is sitting on `6.5 crore for nearly a month now, waiting for a dry spell to take up full-fledged repairs of the city’s roads even as motorists continue to suffer.
Though temporary repairs have been taken up several times during the last month, most were washed away within 24 hours. Incessant rains have turned pot holes into craters and officials estimate that nearly 500-km of accumulated length of roads in the city need full-fledged repairs.
The GHMC Opposition leader, Mr Singireddy Srinivas, of the TD said: “I have been saying that temporary repairs will not work. People are complaining of developing back pains due to driving on bad roads. It will not be a shocking incident if a pregnant woman delivers on the way to hospital. I have never seen such bad roads in my life.”
Experts, however, said that any top-quality of road would also get washed away if rain water stagnated on it. “The GHMC should concentrate on improving the road engineering strategy. The level of the road should be higher in the middle compared to its boundary on either side. Then there should be a drain channel all along the road on either side for water to flow into it,” the chairman of the Institution of Engineers, Mr S. Nagabhushan Rao said.
“We are waiting for a dry spell to take up the repairs. Even tenders have been invited and finalised. But there is no respite from the rain. Water is the biggest enemy of bitumen and we cannot take up repairs unless we get two to three days of dry spell. We are in constant touch with the Hyderabad Meteorological department authorities for weather forecasts,” the GHMC chief engineer, Mr Dhan Singh, told this correspondent.
The GHMC commissioner, Dr Sameer Sharma, said that another `9 crore has also been allocated to lay cement road stretches at 150 identified perennial damage points.
However, these works would be taken up only after the rainy season.
