For all their publicity, the cell phone companies, with their celebrity ambassadors, seem to be a little lax in adhering to norms. A number of cell phone towers, said to be in hundreds, in the city are illegal, according to the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC).
The civic body is mulling action against the erring companies if they fail to regularise these towers by coughing up the relevant fee of Rs one lakh per tower. “Our field staff have been told to cut power supply for the towers and take necessary action once we give them the orders. The one month notice given to the cell phones companies has expired,” said GV Raghu, Chief City Planner, GHMC. The civic body had held talks with representatives of operators like Reliance, Airtel, Idea, Tata, BSNL etc in order to regularise illegal towers in the city. “We received very poor response when we asked the companies to pay up the one-time fee for each unauthorised tower,” said Raghu.
Asked when the civic body will crack the whip, the chief city planner said no date had been fixed yet but insisted that “very strict action” would be taken. “The number of applications for regularisation that we received was negligible. This in spite of the one month notice,” he said.
According to him, some operators objected to the fee itself, claiming that it was too high. But following a high court directive in June that cell phone towers have to be installed only after taking permission from the corporation, the town planning wing issued notices to service providers. A meeting was also held in June with service providers to seek information on the structural ability of the tower and lease agreement with owners, but that too evoked poor response.
An official with the town planning wing said that as per official records, there are just 3,400 cell phone towers in the city but in the same breath added, there are more than a 1,000 unidentified towers and most of them popped up in the last two years. The GHMC will conduct a survey of all the towers in Hyderabad in the near future to identify each of them and find out if they have been installed on buildings without taking into consideration safety and security of the people.
When contacted, representatives of mobile companies refused to comment on the issue, and said they would speak with the authorities to sort it out.
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