GHAZIABAD: The Federation of Apartments Owner Association (FedAOA) has accused Ghaziabad Municipal Corporation( GMC ) of flouting norms while giving contracts to private entities for allowing them to erect unipoles and hoardings.Through an RTI query, the FedAOA had earlier sought details of the number of hoarding given to the private entities and on what terms. “The GMC in its RTI reply said that across the four zones, they had given hoarding rights to two companies for 433 hoardings and unipoles for a fixed period of time,” said Alok Kumar, president of FedAOA. “However, there are innumerable spots where unipoles and hoardings have been erected illegally and GMC has done very little to check it,” he added.In Kavinagar zone, Saffron Communications have been given 170 hoarding and unipole rights, in City zone, 176 hoarding and unipole rights have been given, in Mohan Nagar zone, same company have been given similar rights at 72 places. In Vasundhara zone, 15 hoarding and unipole rights have been given to Intelligent Media Solutions.“The catch is that these companies were bound by contract to construct 112 gates, 90 bus shelters and 11 police booths but they have not honoured the terms of contract and interestingly even after that GMC has not taken any action or prevailed on such companies to honour the contract as a result of which it has caused loss to state exchequer,” said Kumar. “On the other hand, GMC has wilfully allowed hoarding mafias to flourish which again, apart from ruining city’s beauty, are also posing hazard to the residents ,” added Kumar. There have been instances when collapse of hoardings have killed people.The GMC has said that between January 2018 and January 2019, it has acted against 3,190 illegal hoardings and unipoles. “While violation of the contract’s clauses by companies is being looked into, the GMC from time to time has been taking up drives to remove illegal hoardings and in the last one year 3,190 hoardings and unipoles have been demolished,” said a GMC official.

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