Drains under the jurisdiction of the North Delhi Municipal Corporation will be cleared by June 30, municipal officials said on Monday in response to questions raised in the civic body House meeting.
The corporation commissioner said that 90% of desilting work has been completed. However, leaders of both the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Congress claimed that work was actually lagging far behind.
The opposition leaders claimed that a letter from the corporation to the Public Works Department (PWD) had said that as of last month, only 50% of the work that was started in October 2017 had been completed.
In response to a question by Congress leader Mukesh Goel, corporation officials said that they currently had 597 drain-cleaning workers and no suction-cum-jetting machines. To this, Mr. Goel asked: “How were you able to do all this work without any equipment and such little manpower?”
The House was informed that there are a total of 193 large drains measuring a total of 115 km, and 877 small drains measuring a total of 505 km. The AAP, however, claimed that this was a gross underestimate.
The commissioner said that they will provide ward-wise details of work completed within two weeks.
Raising concerns about work undertaken by the Delhi government, Leader of the House Tilak Raj Kataria, said: “During monsoon, drainage from PWD drains backs up into civic drains.”