Hyderabad’s pothole crisis: Commuters question GHMC’s pre-monsoon planning

Hyderabad’s roads have turned dangerous this monsoon, with potholes and broken surfaces making travel difficult. Despite GHMC’s claim of filling over 12,700 potholes, residents say poor planning and weak execution have left commuters struggling amid persistent rains

Hyderabad: A stitch in time saves nine. Apparently, this wisdom quote is what Hyderabad city administration doesn’t believe in.

As the badly ravaged road infrastructure turns commuting into a nightmare this monsoon, questions are raised over the city administration’s preparedness for the season.

With rains repeatedly lashing the city, Hyderabad’s road network has ended up in tatters with more broken surfaces, potholes, and cracks. From main thoroughfares to internal streets, driving has become a tough challenge with skidding bikes, stuttering cars and shuddering autos.

The GHMC does have an exercise termed as ‘pre-monsoon preparedness’ which remains more on paper than in execution. A series of meetings are done, assessments are carried out, volumes of printouts taken, but all that fails to transform into roads better prepared to take on the rains.

“We would not have been fated to this kind of commuting if the civic body had done its work in right earnest,” laments Abhishek Choudhary, a techie at Madhapur.

Another techie, Madhusudhan Reddy, said his bike skidded through a waterlogged road near Chitrapuri. “I fell down and hurt my knee. It could have been more dangerous if the helmet was not there,” he says.

Indeed, the GHMC now presents itself as being in a fighting mode to tackle the bad roads. In a press release a couple of days back, the civic body declared itself to have taken up the road repairs on ‘war footing’.

Clearly, having failed to comfortably address the issues of road surfaces during a ‘peaceful’ summer, the GHMC went into ‘war footing’ mode when rains refused to pause and provide enough time to repair the damage to the roads.

A statement of the GHMC revealed that as part of a special drive, 12,788 potholes were filled till October 6, with 192 potholes filled on that day itself. These were identified and assessed potholes and clearly there would be many more on the main roads and internal streets.

With the rains continuing and adding more potholes every day, and also forecasts being bleak on the immediate prospects of sun shining through long enough to allow road repairs, the GHMC teams might take a long time to even out the road surfaces to ensure comfortable driving.