Hyderabad
A recent meeting has been held by chief secretary Somesh Kumar along with MA &UD chief secretary Arvind Kumar to come up with a deadline to complete the strategic Nala development plan (SNDP) works. Senior officials of line departments, including Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) commissioner DS Lokesh Kumar, were also part of the meeting.
So, there is a ray of hope that Hyderabad’s urban flooding issue is expected to be resolved by the 2022 monsoon season. The line department officials were asked to call the top 20 contractors in the State and hand over SNDP works as per norms. Yet another instruction was to complete the works before the coming monsoon season.
To complete the task, the state government has already approved Rs 858 crore. For the uninitiated, the SNDP was exclusively formed to develop and maintain stormwater drains within the city and its surroundings. To ensure that the tasks will be completed on time, teams comprising officials from GHMC, police revenue, Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board, and Telangana Power Distribution Company Limited will be formed.
Once done, each team will be given one storm drain stretch and the onus of completing the work in their jurisdiction. The teams can conduct field inspections for land clearances as per the approved Detailed Project Report (DPR) and utility shifting along the drains. The team will also submit time to time reports to the respective GHMC zonal commissioners.
Their work also includes making PowerPoint presentations by including the map of the work, properties affected, nearest 2-BHK site available, and utilities that need to be shifted. The review of SNDP works will be done by the chief secretary each Tuesday at 10.30 am, and field visits will also be taken up every week to check the progress of major storm work drains.