Hyderabad: Contractors of the GHMC on Monday staged a protest at the corporation’s head office, demanding their overdue bills be cleared at the earliest. All the monsoon-related civil works will also be halted until they are paid, they added.
Speaking to the media, they said that at least four contractors lost their lives due to heart attacks in the last year and said they are making these demands now as there were impressive collections under the Early Bird Scheme. According to them, bills of Rs.1,320 crore had not yet been cleared.
Similar protests were held at other zonal and circle-level offices across the city. Reports on these unpaid bills have been in the media for a long time, especially since February 2023.
The protestors questioned why when the government was collecting property taxes on time and selling each acre of prime land, it was keeping their payments on hold. Also, the fact that the payments of last year’s work were put on hold, shows that the civic body is in fact in debt.
Earlier this year, Union Minister and BJP state president G Kishan Reddy on Saturday said that slums in Hyderabad are choking due to a slew of problems, including lack of drinking water and proper roads, overflowing sewers, non-functional street lights and inadequate sanitation.
He demanded that Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy’s government fix these issues at the earliest. After inaugurating several developmental works in the Jubilee Hills constituency, he inspected the locality.