Hyderabad: Telangana government in the last seven years has spent more than Rs 75,000 crore for creating infrastructure, roads and bridges in Hyderabad. The government has also sanctioned another Rs 3,500 crore for setting up sewage treatment plants that can process about 1,300 MLD waste water. Hyderabad would be the only city which would have been processing its entire waste water in the next couple of years, said Arvind Kumar, Special Chief Secretary, Municipal Administration and Urban Development.
Speaking at the Hysea Infrastructure Summit, he said the Telangana government was also setting up an Urban Centre of Excellence. It would be a regional centre for urban issues and was going to be in shape in couple of years. The government will continue to focus on making capital investments to improve infrastructure in the State, he said.
“HYSEA has been promoting many sustainability related programmes in the city and green energy is one the key campaigns that it is driving. We have had discussions with the government of Telangana and we proposed to enter into an MoU with the government to promote usage of green power and reduce carbon footprint,” said HYSEA president Bharani Aroll.
For the post-Covid scenario, the State has also launched a policy to promote integrated township development. Two developers who have already come forward and one of them is developing the township in about 480 acre on the outskirts. “We are talking about walk-to-home campuses that have independent houses and more. The integrated township policy is in tune with times, he said.
Hyderabad has overtaken Bengaluru in office space absorption and has shown a 20 per cent growth in employment over the last year, he said.
However, Hyderabad still has to some distance to go in terms of using public transport as only about 33 per cent population used public transport system for daily commute. This was leading to traffic chaos in the city. This was lower compared to 66 per cent in Mumbai and 50 per cent in Delhi. “One million people will collaborate from Kokapet in a few years. Since it is a greenfield city, plans are made to connect with the metro rail or even a BRTS. The planning here can be adopted in tier-II cities like Warangal to address the traffic,” he said.
In Telangana, the urban area is about three per cent of the total geographic area but accommodates about 50 per cent of the population and about 70 per cent of the GDP originated from this. The State earlier had 78 urban local bodies or cities but the number now has gone up to 142 including Hyderabad. “The office space occupied during the last three years together with what is in the pipeline is more than what has been added in the last 70 years. That also speaks about the kind of ecosystem that is existing- law and order, industry pro policies, cosmopolitan nature, cost of living and culture of Hyderabad,” Kumar said.
When the State was formed, the first challenge was to tackle the power issues. “We are now we are self-reliant and have gone ahead in solar segment. TS-iPASS has given 17,500 approvals based on self- certification. The State is also ranked high in the ease of doing businesses. We have brought some policy changes to earmark about ten per cent of every city’s budget as green budget. The results of such a provisioning are visible in the increased greenery on the ORR,” the official said adding that similar online approvals are also being given for buildings.
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