‘GVMC hiding slums behind green tarpaulin sheets’

The slums were a standing testimony to GVMC's and the government's failure to implement slum welfare programmes year after year, said EAS Sarma

Visakhapatnam: The Greater Visakha Municipal Corporation (GVMC) has apparently spent Rs 150 crore of tax-payer’s money on beautification works in Visakhapatnam, and it is a matter of shame that people’s representatives in the Corporation should meekly allow this to happen without remaining accountable to the people, according to former Secretary to Central government, EAS Sarma.

In a statement here on Monday, he said that beautification is a euphemism for enriching contractors. “A few days ago, GVMC displaced hundreds of street-side hawkers and vendors, damaging their shops, in violation of the Central law that has conferred special rights on them. Many of the vendors belong to the most disadvantaged sections of society. This is nothing but an outright onslaught on their human rights. GVMC also violated the environmental laws, especially the CRZ norms on the Vizag beach, damaging valuable marine resources,” he said.

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The latest gimmick of GVMC is that it is “greening” the slums lying along the route from the airport to the city. The slums were a standing testimony to GVMC’s and the government’s failure to implement slum welfare programmes year after year, he alleged. Even in the latest budget approved by GVMC, instead of providing 40 percent of the budgeted amounts for slum development, the Corporation had allocated funds for contractor-driven works, betraying the magnitude of corruption that exists in it, he stated.

Noting the pitiable condition of a slum cluster, including a slum in which a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG), where about 60 Chenchus live in sub-human conditions in ASR Nagar in Thatichetlapalem on the airport road, Dr. Sarma said it was nothing but a mockery of the State’s and GVMC’s contemptuous attitude towards the most disadvantaged groups. Strictly, this attracts the penal provisions of the law to prevent atrocities on Scheduled Tribes.

By hiding the slums behind green tarpaulin sheets, GVMC hoped to hide them from the eyes of the foreign delegates to G-20, he said, and urged the media representatives expose this fraud so that the people of Vizag, if not the G-20 delegates, might know how GVMC is conducting its affairs.