Suburbs on ‘road’ to recovery

After decades of neglect, the city’s suburbs will be the first beneficiaries of the mega merger. The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) has sanctioned Rs 25 crore for laying roads, especially bitumen roads, and repairs in the erstwhile surrounding municipalities. The roads in theseareas have not seen any improvement for the last one year.

GHMC commissioner and special officer CVSK Sarma has delegated powers to the executive engineers of the former municipalities—Kukatpally, L B Nagar, Qutbullapur, Rajendranagar, Uppal, Kapra, Malkajgiri, Alwal, Serilingampally and Gaddiannaram—to prepare estimates and call for tenders in this regard.

While Rs 1 crore has been sanctioned for development of roads in the erstwhile Serilingampally municipal area, which covers Hi-Tec City, Madhapur and Gacchibowli, Rs 2 crore worth works would be grounded in Kukatpally.

“Except for Gaddiannaram municipal area, road work in all other municipalities were not taken up after June, 2006,’’ a senior official of the engineering wing of GHMC told ‘STOI’. The GHMC executive engineers would release tenders for works up to Rs 10 lakh, the superintendent engineer up to Rs 50 lakh, and the chief engineer is empowered to release tenders for above Rs 50 lakh. This was the practice in vogue before the creation of GHMC

“The order delegating powers to the executive engineers to call for tenders was issued on Friday. As per the new arrangement, the deputy municipal commissioners (DMC) have no role in road and civil work,’’ the senior functionary said. Meanwhile, work on many BT roads has been stalled in the surrounding areas as there is no order allowing contractors 10 pc benefit charges and 10 pc overhead charges on the cost of the work if they take up work without quoting in excess of estimation. When the erstwhile MCH faced with the similar situation last year, the standing committee passed a resolution in August, 2006 as contractors threw up their hands and refused to execute works following hike in cement and steel prices.