Heavy downpour in the National Capital and its adjoining areas on early Sunday morning,has exposed the frailty of drainage & disposal system. As usual Municipal Corporations trained their guns on the Delhi Government for doing nothing. Municipal Corporations, responsible of clearing drains under its jurisdiction, started passing the buck on the Delhi government, saying that Public Works Department (PWD) and Flood of Irrigation Department did not desilt big drains resulted in massive water-logging.
City’s drains are maintained by the Public Works’ Department (PWD), Irrigation and Flood departments of the Delhi Government and the three municipal corporations and instead of close coordination among agencies to desilt the drains before the monsoon, blame game started every year to shrug off their responsibilities knowing well about accumulation of water in part of the city owing to choked drains.
SDMC Mayor Anamika said that the civic body has taken all possible measures to deal with the situation of water-logging. She blamed the Delhi government for the water-logging in ITO and its surrounding areas.
The Mayor said that the South Corporation has already desilted its drains. “Every year people faced with difficulties due to water-logging but no concrete steps have been taken by the Delhi government. Several departments and agencies of the Delhi Government were approached with request to complete the desilting of drains with the Corporation before the monsoon. But they constantly ignored.
“The area around ITO comes under the Delhi Government's PWD and Delhi Jal Board. A sewer of the DJB is overflowing along with the ITO due to which the situation arised today,” she said.
“The Commissioner along with additional commissioner, regional deputy commissioner and other senior officials visited the vicinity of ITO and drainage was carried out by three super sucker machines, 18 tankers, one jetting machine and two pumps,” a senior SDMC official said.
A senior north Corporation official said that all the drains of the Corporation have been merged with PWD drains, many have been found choked resulting in overflowing of water.
“The Corporation tried approaching various agencies responsible for maintaining the drains but all the efforts went in vain as Delhi government did not take it seriously,” he said.
“The PWD and flood and irrigation departments have not acted to get rid of the silt. The corporation is only responsible for the small drains. The main problem is bigger drains which are under Government,” he said.