While the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation is keen on increasing property tax from next month and add to its coffers, the civic body’s callous attitude toward the city’s hygiene is best seen from the garbage spilling on to its roads. The shortage of bins also forces residents to throw garbage on the roadside, triggering health hazard as well as causing hurt to the city’s image. While Hyderabad is said to require 10,000 garbage bins, thanks to the civic body the city makes do with only 3,500.
“We need four bins near Mayuri Apartments and another four in Allam Thota Bavi Colony. But there are only two bins, and that, too, at the entrance of Mayuri Marg,” Subramani Iyer, a resident of Mayuri Marg, said. “The bins overflow regularly, and are a major source of health hazard and public nuisance. It’s more condemnable since hundreds of Gitanjali School students enter from this lane. If the GHMC cannot relocate the bins, it can at least add two more bins so that the waste does not spill on to roads,” he said.
According to S.R. Nagar resident K.T. Nath, the city’s “clean and green” image has taken a serious beating as garbage piles up next to the roads, and often spills over. Enquiries revealed that irregular garbage cleaning, shortage of bins and the civic body losing hundreds of its decades-old “bin spots” due to corruption among the lower rung staff are some of the reasons for the city’s image taking a severe beating. It has also been noticed that many drivers of garbage transport trucks do not lift the litter, though on paper they show that the trip has been made and they pocket the diesel money.