Uppal residents have a lot to complain about

Uppal, a suburban locality in the city, is popularly known as the Industrial Development Area (IDA) as it has hundreds of major, medium and small industries. It is referred to as ‘mini-India’ since people from various States including West Bengal, Kolkata and Bihar have settled here. Residents are hoping that the construction of an underground drainage system, which was stopped abruptly, be completed now that polls are on the horizon. Pollution levels in all these colonies is forever increasing as a number of pharmaceutical companies are emitting waste material into the Musi. Komati Ravi, a local politician said that when the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) was in power, Rs 30 crore was sanctioned for construction of an underground drainage system. “Because of purely political reasons, the construction of the underground drainage system was halted though 90 per cent of the work has been completed. The open drainage system in Uppal leads to various health problems and communicable diseases which is spreading rapidly,” he said. Recently, two residents of Uppal died of swine flu. Besides wastage from industries, the locality also has a severe drinking water shortage. “Pollution of ground water due to improper construction of three main nalas — Ramanthapur, Nallacheruvu and Nacharam tanks — are causing environmental problems in this constituency. As many as 440 industries function from here and these three water tanks are polluted as several industries are dumping waste material into the tanks,” said M Ashok Reddy, a resident of Bharatnagar. He said that three slum areas, Veerappagadda, Bharatnagar and Chilakanagar, face severe shortage of drinking water. There are seven divisions in Uppal Legislative Constituency, which comes under the GHMC. Going by the public mood, it appears that candidates who are in the fray, will have a tough time convincing people to vote in their favour. Insufficient rations are another cause for complaint. “There are 42 ration shops in the Uppal Legislative constituency but they fail to supply adequate pulses, rice, sugar, dal and cooking oil to 2.5 lakh population,” points out K Vijay Kumar, a resident of Ganesh Nagar. “We want the government to sanction more ration shops to distribute adequate pulses and rice to us,” Vijaya Kumar says. Sixty-year-old K Gangadhara Rao, a resident of Habsiguda says that several roads in his locality have been encroached. “Several shops and houses which have been constructed here have been done so by encroaching roads or occupying open land illegally,” he says. With regard to the existing traffic problem, he says that the road from Nacharam to Chilkanagar was damaged about a year ago. “Motorists have a tough time on this 3 kilometre stretch. Despite several requests to municipal authorities, it was not repaired,” he complains. Another resident of Raghavendranagar, B V Narasimhulu complains about how the presence of several liquor shops in the locality render it unsafe for women. “A few liquor shops run till midnight in violation of rules,” he says. By MOULI MAREEDU