No rainwater harvesting, people to struggle with flooded roads again

Ludhiana: With monsoon to begin by the end of this month, residents will have to face the problem of waterlogging and flooding in many areas of the city, this year too. The city municipal corporation has failed to set up rain harvesting system and storm water sewerage.
Officials of the BRS Nagar have failed to set up rain water harvesting system and no changes have been made to solve the issue of water logging in the area in the last one year. The rain water harvesting system was approved for all the four zonal offices of the municipal corporation (MC), but not even single came into existence. The officials showed helplessness by stating paucity of funds as the major reason, including other issues, because of which they could not execute the same on ground level.
Parks which were selected for rain water harvesting system are located in Kitchlu Nagar, Udham Singh Nagar, Malerkotla House and Tagore Nagar part A and B.
The officials of the civic body had prepared a proposal in November 2019 after getting the required approval. The total cost of the project was set at Rs 9.65 lakh. Similarly, as pilot project, the rooftop rain water harvesting system was taken up first at zone D and leisure valley. The tenders for the same were also floated, but nothing worked out.
Requesting anonymity, one of the officials of the civic body claimed that they had prepared estimates and approvals were given at the local level, but the state government issued advisory on spending money at essential services only.
He said they could not take up the proposed things due to government instructions and also because of the financial crisis. He said there have been discussions over rooftop or ground-level rain water harvesting system as some suggest only rooftop technology should be used to store rain water.
Last year too, residents struggled due to waterlogging. With monsoon expected to hit the city by June 28 and the prediction by the Metrological department says that the rainfall will be in abundance. In the absence of storm sewerage system in the city, roads will again be submerged in rain water giving a tough time to commuters.
Surjit Singh, a resident of Pakhowal Road, said, “There is a need to strengthen the existing sewerage system and take preventive measures to curb water logging. The rain water harvesting system should also be installed in all the government buildings on priority, following which it should be taken up in private buildings. Last year, flooding had left many areas submerged especially near Buddha Nullah.”
He said similar scenes will be repeated this year too.
Mayor Balkar Sandhu said, “The work is pending because of government instructions on not to spend money unless it is an emergency. We will now take up only the important projects one by one as soon as Covid-19 situation gets normal.”
Notably, the recently notified building bylaws had made the installation of rain water harvesting in buildings constructed in 100 square meters (119 square yards) and above mandatory.
Earlier, the MC had fixed the limit to 250 square yards for the residential areas. But the MC has always failed to implement the same in the city. Except a few people, not many people have installed rain water harvesting system in their buildings. Last year, in a random checking conducted by the officials of the building branch, it came to light that out of 400 building owners, only 52 had complied with the directions.