Rain, loose sand, and sewage has become the norm in the inner lanes in many parts of the city.
No part of the city is spared, be it the upscale Banjara Hills Road No. 10, N.M. Guda, or the junction on the southern side of Charminar.
While the rainwater gets drained over a period of time, citizens and motorists are being forced to deal with cracked manholes, rubble and ditch water in these locations as there seems to be no solution to overflowing sewerage lines.
On Saturday evening, when the skies opened up, Shankar Atal just shrugged his shoulders as the rainwater blended with the sewage in front of his dry fruit shop in Begum Bazaar. “We are helpless. A small rain and the water bubbles out of the sewerage lines and stays there for days. The road was laid two years back but the drainage problem has not been solved,” says Mr. Shankar.
“There are more complaints when it rains. Our team rushes to the place of complaint, we clean the line and move to the next complaint,” says Savitri, who is part of the team in Bandlaguda attending a complaint in a residential area.
A few kilometres away, citizens share the same grief in the commercial hub of the city. In the festive season where devotees make a beeline to the streets in Dhoolpet for buying idols, the road is filled with sewage for the whole stretch between Purana Pul and Mangalhat.
“We are covering our idols with plastic sheets and we have to keep them on higher ground as there is a constant spray of dirty water,” says an idol maker. On the other side, Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board employees try to clear the line.
Some of the manholes are cracked while others have given way. The sanitation workers clean the line, remove a black smelly mud and leave it just near the place which has been cleaned. And the cycle continues.
