Hyderabad poised to become a developed metropolis

If figures, as reflected in the allocations for Hyderabad in the Sindh budget for fiscal 2024-25, materialise over the next year, the city seems poised to be turned into a developed metropolis.

The Sindh Local Government Department, which is leading the race by far in terms of development allocations, will inject close to Rs10billion for construction and rehabilitation of roads, bridges, water supply and drainage projects in Hyderabad in the coming fiscal.

However, no project has been approved for construction of a new water filtration plant in Hyderabad whose need is being badly felt by citizens.

Other important projects missing from the budget are construction and rehabilitation of sewerage treatment plants as the city’s entire effluent, generated in the residential, commercial and industrial areas, is being discharged into the Indus River and its canals.

One legal as well as environmental absurdity being committed by the government itself in this regard is earmarking funds for a scheme of laying a drainage pipe from Labour Colony and Gulshan-e-Zealpak to Phuleli Canal, which is currently taking the largest quantum of Hyderabad’s sewerage.

The government will release Rs154.807 million for that project as proposed in the budget. A much delayed plan to rehabilitate 400 million gallons per day (MGD) pre-settlement lagoons of the city’s largest filtration plant on Jamshoro road at the cost of Rs1.22 billion will receive Rs239 million in 2024-25.

The scheme was approved in 2018 and physically appears far from completion. The lagoons are used to store water to supply to the city during winters and drought season.

Likewise, for the upgrade and improvement of 5 MGD filtration plant at Ghangra Mori to 10 MGD the provincial government will release Rs750 million next year to complete the Rs1.33 billion scheme. The arterial road project, stretching from Autobahn to Hala Naka via Fateh Chowk, has been earmarked Rs519 million funds. The groundbreaking of the 13 kilometres long partial ring-road scheme at the cost of Rs3.219 billion was performed in October, 2023, by the Mayor Kashif Ali Shoro. It is aimed to ease the flow of traffic between Qasimabad, Latifabad, Hala Naka and Hyderabad taluka, connecting commercial roads, new vegetable market, industrial zone and the residential areas.

The existing two-lane dual carriageway road will be widened to three lanes on each side including the widening of three bridges on as many canals on the way.

The Greater Qasimabad sewerage project, a lifeline scheme for drainage of a large part of Qasimabad taluka’s residential and commercial areas which is awaiting completion for the last 13 years, has been allocated Rs762.481 million. The project’s ongoing phase III will be completed at the cost of Rs3.1 billion. Its delay has become a cause for permanent pollution of a freshwater distributary, Wadhu Wah, which is being filled with sewage by residential and commercial areas on its three-kilometer stretch in Qasimabad.

Another scheme awaiting completion for longer than one and a half decade is a flyover at Hala Naka intersection. The partial work of the structure has become a source of traffic logjam on an intersection which connects traffic from highways to the new vegetable market, Mirpurkhas-Hyderabad road and to Latifabad.

However, the government has earmarked a very dismal amount of just Rs10 million for Rs445.87 million flyover on which Rs183.83 million will be spent by the end of June.

The construction of a bridge and redesigning of flyover on Hyderabad-Mirpurkhas road will be given Rs872.437 million in the next fiscal.

A sum of Rs1122.23 million has already been spent on it. The authorities will spend Rs958.455 million on construction and rehabilitation of primary and secondary roads of Hyderabad. And this is just one big allocation out of dozens of allocations approved by the local government for big and small roads in the district.