Colonies used as dump yards

The poor civic amenities in Rajendranagar Assembly constituency will be big a challenge in the approaching Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) elections as residents are seeking completion of several pending civic works in their divisions

Constituency: Rajendranagar

Voters’ profile: The constituency has a total 3.61 lakh voters in its five divisions that include Shaktipuram with 26,053 voters, Shivarampally with 33,078 voters, Mylardevpally with 40,628 voters, Rajendranagar with 40,245 voters and Attapur with 44,653 voters

Rajendranagar Assembly Constituency, one of the localities situated on the outskirts of the GHMC limits, has been always a major place for environment related studies and is famous place among many national and international environmentalists, veterinary and medicinal students.

Noticeably, all the major developments have happened on the approaching routes to these important institutions only and other residential areas in the constituency have been left unattended by the civic bodies.

Poor Roads
Almost all the roads in residential colonies have something to be repaired and in majority of the colonies there are no roads at all. Roads in colonies of Attapur and Shivarampally are the worse affected.A resident from Khaja Nagar in Attapur, Mal Reddy said the situation becomes horrible during drain leakage in rainy season as the water is logged in roads.

“We have a poor availability of ambulances, postal services, canned water services and availability of gas cylinder services due to the condition of these roads. All the service providers fear to come in such area,” he said.

However, the municipal Corporation has laid foundation for roads but, the works are limited to a few areas only. For example, the foundation stone at Shivarampally for laying of CC road was done in June 2015 but, the work has hardly been started.

Traffic police harassment
Locals have been found to be offended by the rude practices of Traffic Police, who lift vehicles parked on the service road at Attapur Main Road. Currently, the road is undergoing extension works and visitors are generally using it for vehicle parking.

Kamalnath a senior citizen who visited Attapur said that the police lifted his two-wheeler when he went inside a bank. “I fought with the Traffic Police to get my vehicle back. The Police are harassing only the two-wheeler users and not bothered about others.”

“More than 50 autos park on this road every day and nothing is done to stop them,” he added.When contacted, the Traffic Police officials said that they occasionally lift vehicles and that too after announcing it on speaker. “We know our duty,” a traffic constable at Attapur Traffic Police Station replied, on a telephone call.

Health and sanitation issues
In many areas of the constituency it has been found that they are no proper sewage lines resulting in flowing of drain water on colony roads. The ‘Nau pahadi’ slum area in front of the Zoological Survey of India office and Mythri colony in Shaktipuram are a few of the examples that have no sewage lines.

A tent house dealer from the slum, Shabeer said that though the area falls under municipal limits they are no facilities provided here. “All the slums in Attapur, Shaktipruam and Mylardevpally have similar issues,” he said.

He informed that their slum is generally used as a garbage dumping and segregation points by the sanitation staff, which has become a serious issue of concern for them.In fact, the government schools are also used as garbage dumping points. For example, the situation of the Government Primary School at Vambay colony in Rajendranagar.

The residents inform that the municipal sanitation staff does not clean the garbage on daily basis, which is creating threat to the health of children and adults. A local party worker, Krishnakanth said that he has informed the municipal officials but, no one has attended the matter.

When Hans contacted the former local Corporators, most of them were reluctant to comment on any of the issues.

Poor civic amenities
Inadequate drinking water and lack of civic amenities are prevailing in the constituency. In addition, locals are aggrieved on the few number of post letter boxes in their colonies. An engineering student from Krishna Reddy Nagar of Mylardevpally, Samhita Albert said that most of the colony residents in her area are senior citizens who prefer writing letters than using other ways for sending messages.

“The senior citizens have approached the Corporators and MLA long back to setup some post letter boxes but, the issue has not been addressed,” she said.The post letter boxes numbers are not more than a single digit in the divisions of the Constituency.

Mylardevpally former Corporator spoke to us and discussed their major initiatives. He said that they are currently working on bringing a model vegetable market and playground by the municipal corporation.