Chief Secretary S.K. Joshi has, in a review meeting on Thursday, reportedly expressed anger and dissatisfaction at the tardy pace of work in relation to the urban parks across the city.
He expressed serious concern about the lack of progress on parks handed over to the Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority (HMDA) for development, and is learnt to have asked them to quit the project if they cannot finish the work before the revised deadline.
A total of 59 urban parks within HMDA limits were initially scheduled for completion before June-end. However, they got delayed for various reasons, owing to which, it has been decided in the meeting to move the deadline to November-end. The Chief Secretary has rejected HMDA’s request to give time up to March next year, highly placed sources have informed.
The government had, more than a year ago, identified 129 forest blocks adjoining or locked up in urban areas, for development. Of these, 59 blocks within HMDA limits were decided to be developed as urban parks, while the remaining 70 were to be developed as Conservation Zones.
Seven blocks were to be developed into eco-tourism zones, and 52 into urban parks, which would serve as nature-friendly recreation zones for urban population. For the sake of diversity and distribution of work, the 59 blocks were divided among seven departments, including Forest, HMDA, TSIIC, Tourism, TS Forest Development Corporation, GHMC and Hyderabad Metro Rail.
Fifteen parks have already been completed and opened for public, 14 of them by Forest department, and one by TSFDC. Twenty-three parks are in various stages of progress, of which four parks respectively at Majid Gadda on Srisailam road, Sangapur near Gajwel, Narsapur and Nagaram towards ECIL, will be launched by this month-end.
Works pertaining to 21 parks are yet to start, even while tenders for them have been finalised. HMDA could not complete even one park so far, and has not even started work pertaining to nine parks. Works are in progress for seven others.
HMDA officials attending the meeting reportedly informed the CS that there was no response for tenders in some cases while the others could not be taken up owing to elections. Mr. Joshi has rejected both the reasons, and asked the officials to divide the tenders into parts if they are not viable as one big chunk.
The meeting has decided to transfer the five parks allotted to Tourism department to the Forest department, when the Tourism officials pleaded lack of funds. Special Chief Secretary, Environment & Forests, Ajay Mishra, Principal Secretary, Finance, Ramakrishna Rao, Principal Chief Conservator of Forests P.K.Jha, MD, Hyderabad Metro Rail N.V.S.Reddy, MD, EPTRI Kalyan Chakravarthi and others attended the meeting.