The never ending traffic snarls that the Delhiites face every monsoon are the result of choked drains, said a Delhi Government report. The report also touches the inhuman issue of overcome and riddance of manual scavenging.
The 17-page long report was prepared by a committee of the engineer-in-chiefs of Public Works Department, North, South, East Delhi Municipal Corporations and Irrigation and Flood Control Department.
According to this report, the main factors of flooding of drains is mushrooming of unauthorised colonies with no basic civic amenities including sewerage and storm water drainage system, mixed flow of sewage and storm water, inadequate municipal waste collection and disposal system, poor sweeping mechanism, excessive concretisation of road berms, waste from dairy colonies including cow dung and dumping of solid waste, garbage, cow dung, and construction and demolition waste in the drains.
It also said that excessive use of plastics and encroachment over the drains also added to the blocked drains in the city.
The civic bodies are responsible for the cleaning and maintaining of different roads and area on the city — divided according to areas and size of the roads.
The report also highlights short, medium and long term measures for containing this chaos of the Capital city.
The short term measures include removal of encroachment from drains, ban on plastics, rigorous awareness campaigns while the medium term measure is quite ambitious. The suggestion is to deploy machines such as super sucker, suction-cum-jetting machines, wheeled excavators for ensuring desilting to do away manual labour and a cost of Rs 3,094 crore has been estimated for purchase and maintenance of this equipment. Separately, in addition to the machinery for Irrigation and Flood Control Department, which is specifically for dredging would cost Rs 81.45 crores.
"This report is an ambitious plan yet I would like to be optimistic as it is for the larger and long term good. I think the design and execution of drainage system, as per the report prepared by Professor Gosain, IIT Delhi should be implemented in achieving the goals," a Delhi Government official told The Pioneer.
As per the professor, fixing of uniform criteria for design of storm water drain, re-fixing of high flood level of all the natural drain, laying of sewerage system and adequate numbers of sewage treatment plants to cover the entire city are some of the measures needed for the long term management of drainage system in the national Capital.
The report marks that all agencies should separate the sewerage and storm water drainage systems covering entire city without further delay to prevent "water logging and outbreak of epidemics". "De-silting of all big storm water drains like Najafgarh, Barapullah, supplementary drains and their tributaries is necessary to bring down their beds to original levels. ..Mechanisation of cleaning operations besides mechanised and safe removal of silt to dumping ground, proper disposal of solid waste so that it is not dumped into the drains and restoration of water bodies with a complete ban on concretisation in green areas," stresses the report in its conclusion.
