The let up in rain after a near 24-hour continuous spell didn’t bring any relief to citizens on Tuesday as long stretches of roads were reduced to sand heaps with puddles of water in the middle. The result was a painfully slow traffic movement in most parts of the city and mishaps on the road with two-wheeler riders losing control over their vehicles. Kondapur, Balamarai, HiTec City, Gayatri Nagar, Jillelguda, Narsapur X Road, Atttapur and Puppalguda were some of the worst-affected areas.
“At the Fateh Nagar flyover, I saw traffic policemen filling up potholes with sand that had come out of the road. Every time a bus passed by, the policeman with shovel would rush and push back the sand as the road turned dangerous due to the pothole,” said a commuter.
The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) has an outlay of ₹1611.45 crore on roads and pavements for the year 2017-18. Last year, the civic body had spent ₹110.73 on maintenance of roads and had a budgeted outlay of ₹860.22 crore. In 2014-15, ₹828.91 crore was spent on roads. Despite the huge infusion of money into developing this basic infrastructure, the roads bring the city to a grinding halt on many days during monsoon.
Citizens who were stuck in the traffic vented their anger on the social media: “The great Begumpet (Secunderabad station) road... Is this what Hyderabad destined for?” wrote one user tagging Minister for Municipal Administration and Urban Development K.T. Rama Rao.
“Varshakalam ayyedaka road lu veyyaru, malla varshakalam ochedaka ah vesina road lu undavu (Till the beginning of monsoon, they don’t lay roads and the roads don’t last till the end of monsoon),” wrote another Twitter user.
Part of the problem remains the ad hocism to road repair and road-laying. On Tuesday morning when the GHMC tweeted four photographs showing road repair: “Filling of potholes with wet mix and levelling undulations by #GHMC engineering staff,” a number of users called out the civic body for the shoddy work. “These are all temporary fixes every 3-4 months. A nice way of getting steady income to fill pockets of certain authorities,” wrote Vinay Gawli.
The statistics dished out by the GHMC are staggering. In the one year period between June 2016 and June 2017, the GHMC officials filled up 96,844 potholes out of the identified 97,215. This year, between April 1 and June 14, the GHMC officials filled up 7,347 potholes out of the identified 7,561 in the five zones.
With so many potholes cropping up every year, is it any surprise that the condition of roads has deteriorated to an extent where even walking is dangerous.