Times
of India: Hyderabad: Thursday, 17 December 2015.
With only a
few weeks left for a fresh round of Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation
(GHMC) polls, RTI revelations have put the civic body's 'balance sheets' under
a strict scanner. Turns out that GHMC officials, between 2009 and 2014, either
misappropriated or wasted a whopping Rs 3,630 crore of public money courtesy
a series of RTI responses (copies of which are in TOI's possession) collected
by activists over a period of several months.
Predictably,
activists are now up in arms against the municipal body and accuse its
'custodians' (read: corporators and other officials) of sheer incompetence and
and complete lack of accountability. In fact, they claim that the figure f
Rs 3,630 crore is a conservative estimate considering that total annual
budget of GHMC, for the past five years, stood at a staggering Rs 33,282 crore!
"A
classic example of wastage (of money) is the 150 corporators' quota of Rs 690
crore (for five years) earmarked for developmental works. It is found that as
much as Rs 451 crore from this amount was left unused," said RTI activist
Sambi Reddy Bontu, who is also Lok Satta's general secretary for GHMC.
For the
record, each GHMC corporator was entitled to spend Rs 4.6 crore for such works
in his or her constituency during their last five-year term. Majority of them
including former mayors and floor leaders of opposition parties, however,
failed to spend their quota of funds.
And this list
includes the likes of former mayors Banda Karthika Reddy and Majid Hussain who
spent just about Rs 1.18 crore and Rs 2.17 crores of their developmental funds
respectively during their tenure, while letting major chunk of funds go waste.
If that's not
all, RTI activists also question the multiple 'study tours' undertaken by GHMC
corporators to Shimla, Gangtok, Darjeeling and Kashmir in their last five year
term. RTIs reveal that they spent around Rs 3.66 crore on these junkets.
The sordid saga
does not end here as activists listed out several other examples where the GHMC
officials and corporators failed the 'accountability test' on counts such as:
appointment of private consultancy agencies (Rs 25 crores) to prepare
feasibility reports (such as laying of roads, flyovers etc) that never saw the
light of the day, construction of Sewerage Treatment Plants worth Rs 500 crore
among others.
Even in areas
such as vaccination of stray dogs and maintenance of 370 vehicles used by
GHMC's sanitation wing all over 15 years old and in lying in a rickety
condition RTI replies revealed that the GHMC failed to keep records. Turns
out it spend Rs 20 crore and Rs 100 crore on these drives respectively while
there is no explanation about just why this money was used.
"It is
found that the department spent Rs 1.24 lakh for maintainence of a Bajaj Chetak
scooter and a whopping Rs 16 lakh for the upkeep of an auto-rickshaw, used by
the sanitation department, in the five years!" said Durga Ramacandra Rao, another
RTI activist.
Activists
alleged that the GHMC wings and officials handling advertisements, property
taxes and roads are known to indulge in maximum corruption.
Proof: As per
data collected under the RTI Act, the GHMC spent Rs 2,298.33 crore including Rs
608.11 crore for road repairs during 2009-2015. "Most of this could have
been saved by ensuring that drainage water from homes and sheds do not flow
onto the roads," argued Gangadhar Tilak Katnam, the city's pothole man,
who has already filled 1,210 potholes on city roads with his own money.
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