Broken grilles at Hussain Sagar pose threat to visitors

Khairatabad: The encirclement of grilles around the Hussain Sagar is broken at many places and left unchecked by the eyes of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporations (GHMC) authorities. The open grilles pose threat to the pedestrians and visitors of Tank Bund as they are damaged at points where the lake is deep.

To avert any potential threat, the city police made temporary arrangements by installing barricades to protect the citizens. However, GHMC is making no efforts to protect the visitors. Ironically, it has not put up any sign boards warning about the danger at the location.

Mahavir, a security personnel from NTR gardens, said, “Many places around the Hussain Sagar Lake have broken grilles. At many places the grilles are erected without any support which can fall with a slight push. Some of these grilles are removed during Ganesh Ustava and never repaired, and some are removed by violent public protestors”.

A traffic police constable Nagarjuna said, “It is dangerous for the pedestrians. We have used police barricades to avoid harmful incidents, nonetheless the lake police is also facing quite a lot of trouble with this encirclement which is not proper.” A GHMC worker Manikanta near Hussain Sagar said “The grilles are mostly decayed it is time for the authorities to replace them soon.”  

A daily jogger, Hashmi Patel said “It is always safe to have grilles installed rightly since it protects people from falling into the lake. Since it is summer, a large number of people visit Tank Bund every day. Mostly children are vulnerable if the fencing is not installed properly, or it can be anyone oblivious of the weak grilles.” 

He said that grilles were damaged for over a week now and authorities are not waking up.” Several attempts were made to contact lake police and GHMC but all went in vain.