GHMC Commissioner promises vastly improved performance in the new year

Commissioner of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC), R.V. Karnan, promised ‘a sea of change’ in the administration of the corporation on all fronts in the new year.

During a media conference on Wednesday to give a round up of GHMC’s initiatives in 2025, Mr. Karnan said sanitation will be the priority with special focus on road safety, in all zones including the newly appended ones for the next one month.

Abandoned vehicles and other obstructions on roads will be removed as part of the drive. Already mega sanitation drive has been completed for three days, he said, and urged citizens to report bulk garbage points and abandoned vehicles to the GHMC control room on 040-21111111 or 8125966586.

Listing out GHMC’s achievements during the year, Mr.Karnan said the corporation has achieved sixth rank in Swachh Survekshan 2025, 7-Star Garbage Free City rating, Water+ ODF re-certification, besides Promising Swachh Shehar of Telangana award. Hyderabad topped the country in secondary and tertiary solid waste collection, and improvement will be achieved in primary collection too. Penal action is being initiated against sanitation violations, with 10,752 challans worth ₹2.34 crore issued so far.

In a major development, the Assistant Medical Officers of Health have been eased out of the sanitation responsibilities, and Engineering staff have been deployed in their place towards improvement of waste handling, the Commissioner said. On the Public Health front, a total 9656 food safety inspections were carried out, and 65 violations detected. Rs.14.84 lakh penalties have been imposed. Efforts are on for establishment of a ₹5 crore Basic Food Testing Laboratory at KPHB Colony.

As per the Supreme Court’s directions, 1,064 Institutional premises have been inspected and 2,897 stray dogs have been cleared from there, and sent to shelters.

On the Revenue front, GIS mapping of properties, followed by a drone survey has yielded 1.02 lakh properties which are unassessed or under assessed. Integration of Property Tax data with TGSPDCL electricity data, yielded ₹7.40 crore additional revenue so far, he said.

Through a separate statement, GHMC has informed that the corporation, through GIS based mapping and asset management system, completed survey of nearly 14 lakh properties using mobile applications for ground truthing. Quality checks have been completed for 4.41 lakh properties with over 1.02 lakh new assessments and 9,154 under-assessed properties. Field verification by Revenue staff is going on.

In addition, GHMC has mapped major civic assets including 1,502 parks, 599 public toilets, 376 sports complexes, and 34 major GHMC sports facilities, it said. A ward-wise Storm Water Drain (SWD) mapping program has covered 1,121 kilometres of drains so far, encompassing 24,147 catch-pits and 291 culverts. This comprehensive dataset will serve as the technical foundation for the Telangana Core Urban Region (TCUR) Storm Water Master Plan, enabling scientific flood mitigation, capacity analysis, and long-term infrastructure planning.