The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) will start de-silting work along the drainage channels, nos. 7,9 and 5, from Wednesday after opening of the re-tendering documents. The civic body on Tuesday decided the course of action as monsoon has already touched the Andaman islands.
Work for drainage channels i.e. no. 1, 3, 4, 6, 8 and 10 will be decided after May 29 following the opening of tender papers on that day.
While cleaning work has started across the drainage channel no. 2 behind Sainik School, the BMC's own workers will do the de-silting work in the secondary and tertiary (smaller drains) in the 10 wards where the cleaning work is managed by the civic body. For the cleaning of the 10 drainage channels across the city, the civic body will spend `1,52,62,000.
Executive Engineer Drainage Division under BMC Pradip Duria said, “The cleaning of the drainage channels will include cleaning of their basin, lifting of garbage and other wastes blocking the flow of water in the channel and de-silting activity as they take the loads from the smaller drains and carry the water to Gangua nullah.’’
It can be mentioned here that most of the drainage channels have originated from the western part of the city and move towards eastern part and deposit their water into the Gangua nullah as it circles around the city and finally joins the Daya river after a few km from the city.
The cleaning and de-silting of the basins of the drainage channels would ensure better flow of rain water to Gangua and thus ensuring less threat for water logging in the low-lying areas of the city.
The cleaning work will continue up to October this year as the rainy season stays almost till the end of September. The tendering process for the cleaning of the 10 drainage channels started on April 15 this year.
While contractors are engaged for works worth more than `3 lakh, for three works less than `3 lakh the Drainage Division will engage persons to execute the work as no contractor applied for the execution of work in those three cases. Mayor Ananta Narayan Jena okayed the Drainage Division to go for the work as no takers were there for the work.