Merger will help areas in the long run, claims GHMC commissioner

With Greater Hyderabad turning into the largest urban agglomeration in terms of population and area in the state, the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) will strive to provide better facilities and high standards of civic services with better civic administrative mechanism and ensure better planning and focused developments of the city, said GHMC Commissioner MT Krishna Babu.

“The GHMC will strive for equitable devolution of finances and utilisation of resources, ensuring uniform enforcement and making Hyderabad city internationally competitive with world class infrastructure and services”, he added.

Speaking to Express, the commissioner said that since the constitution of the GHMC, large amounts have been spent in the erstwhile surrounding 12 municipalities to improve the quality of infrastructure and civic amenities.

As a result substantial development have taken place in the GHMC and quality of services have also appreciably improved. After the formation of the GHMC and due to the location of the international airport at Shamshabad, tremendous development activities are occurring in the surrounding areas of the GHMC.

Similar activities will be witnessed shortly in the 36 gram panchayats merged into the GHMC by the State government recently.

The GHMC is going to set up of having five zonal offices and 30 circle offices, there would be between 2 to 2.50 lakh people under the purview of each circle. We want to designate the powers at the circle level itself for smooth functioning of day-to-day administration at the local level.

The zonal office will act as a coordinating body between circle offices and the head office at Tank Bund Road. The head office will act as the planning body. The GHMC has written a letter to the State government requesting them to allot five IAS officers to the manage the GHMC administration. Of the five IAS officers, three will appointed as zonal commissioners, two will be posted as additional commissioners to head the planning, projects, sanitation and finance wings.

The decision to merge these gram panchayats was taken based on the request of Rangareddy district collector as lots of areas surrounding the GHMC limits have an urbanised character and a majority of the people living in these panchayats are dependant of non-agricultural activities for livelihood.

These gram panchayats are a contiguous part of the GHMC and due to the strategic location with vast availability of lands for the purpose of rapid urbanisation which offer great potential for expansion and concentration of activities and continues to offer opportunities for increased employment.