The BMC is facing an uphill task of finishing the remaining pre-monsoon preparation work, an official said. (File)WITH BARELY a month left to finish its pre-monsoon nullah cleaning exercise across the city, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is running behind on its May 15 deadline to complete the work. To date, the BMC has been able to finish only 20 per cent of the work in the island city and its suburbs.
Officials from the storm water drain (SWD) department said they had managed to finish 20 per cent of the desilting. The BMC is facing an uphill task of finishing the remaining pre-monsoon preparation work, an official said. The civic body’s delay in cleaning drains could cause waterlogging during the monsoon.
A senior official from the SWD department said, “We are behind schedule as May 15 is the deadline and we still have to finish 70 per cent of the work.”
The official added that the slow progress was mainly due to “delay in mobilisation of machinery and resources from the contractor’s side”.
The official also said the other reason for the delay was the difficulty in finding land for dumping the silt that had been cleared so far.
This year, before monsoon, the BMC passed proposals of over Rs 130 crore for cleaning minor and major nullahs in addition to the Mithi river. Another reason for the slow pace of the cleaning work is the absence of local corporators who alert the civic administration if contractors fail to start the desilting work in their localities.
Due to the Lok Sabha elections, all the corporators are busy campaigning for their party candidates. “Since corporators have a grassroots network in their areas and for any civic problems locals first approach them, they are crucial for door-to-door election campaigns. This has led to negligence towards civic issues,” a Shiv Sena corporator said.
Recently, the corporators, in the Standing Committee meeting, had raised the issue of the delay in starting civic works. They alleged that despite a work order being issued before the model code of conduct came into effect, contractors had failed to start work.
According to data available with the SWD department, the city has over 2900 km of drain network comprising minor and major nullahs, arch drains, roadside open drains and closed pipe drains. While the city has 530 km of drain length, western suburbs have a network of more than 1,600 km and about 857 km in eastern suburbs.
