HYDERABAD: Hyderabad’s notoriously capricious roads played up again on Saturday when a road caved in all of a sudden at Safilguda in the suburb of Malkajgiri and tow motorcycles, one carrying a couple, fell right in.
The injured persons were helped up by passersby and taken to a nearby hospital for treatment.
This is the third such incident of a sink hole in Hyderabad during this year’s monsoon.
In Saturday’s incident, the subsidence occurred where a Water Board crew had dig a pit to carry out some repairs, and filled it with loose gravel after their work was done. The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) came by and built a road over it without checking the soundness of the earth.
Hyderabad has acquired a bit of a reputation for the dramatic acts of its roads this year. Back in May, the road along NTR Marg near Secretariat subsided suddenly during a spell of rain. The gaping hole revealed underground sewers rushing to empty their contents into the Hussain Sagar lake right across the road.
Last month, another large crater occurred on the same busy road at NTR Marg. It became something of a tourist spot while the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) took 10 days to repair the road.
Similar incidents have taken place earlier in Punjagutta and King Koti. The Panjagutta Road near NIMS hospital, the central spine of the city’s transportation system, was closed for three days after it caved in a few years ago.
A GHMC official explained that roads cave in if contractors do not restore the earth properly after laying down cables, etc.
"Hyderabad’s underground drainage system has fallen on bad days. These sink holes are the result of poor quality of road and draining work," a senior official of the engineering wing of the GHMC said.