OPEN HOUSE: Should the MC authorities be taken to task for their ill-preparedness during monsoon?

Adopt rainwater harvesting system

We have perhaps accepted surroundings flooded with sewer water as our fate during the monsoon every year. Now, when the monsoon has already arrived one can only hope that the civic authorities ensure that their men and machines reach every waterlogged area without any delay. Can’t say what parameters make a Smart City but the prerequisite of a clean city is its well-functioning sewage system. Outward make-up of city lanes by recarpeting or fixing tiles is fine but what Amritsar needs more is a revamped sewage system. If rainwater harvesting and setting up of sewage treatment plants are taken up as a priority, problems of inadequate/ contaminated water supply will also be solved along with flooding of roads/streets. Some water for irrigation may also be there as a bonus.

HL Sharma

Choked sewers cause waterlogging

The Pollution Control Board should act swiftly when they find any industrial unit releasing untreated effluents. Even small amount of rain leads to waterlogging due to choked sewer pipes. One can also see heaps of filth on the roadsides. This becomes a nightmare for pedestrians and two-wheeler riders. Politicians and bureaucrats don’t bother as they are to move in their luxury four-wheelers. The only way to come out of this mess is that some local NGO should move the National Green Tribunal and ask for heavy personal penalties to MC officials responsible for it.

Harsh Johar

Too many cooks spoil the broth

Just half-an-hour rain exposes the working of Municipal Corporation (MC) as within this short span whole of old city and parts of civil lines are left inundated. During monsoon, residents don’t commute not due to rains but because of water accumulation on the roads and streets. Moreover, there is nothing new in it, since long it is a routine affair during monsoon. Rather situation is deteriorating with introduction of latest machinery for cleaning and desilting of sewerage lines. Why the MC starts desilting with the arrival of monsoon, why not on regular basis during the whole year. Actually, the authorities concerned are interested in buying machinery or in new projects were they can make money, so such maintenance work does not have any attraction for them. Moreover, it is said too many cooks spoil the dish, to address such problems too many authorities such as the MC, Amritsar Improvement Trust, Amritsar Smart City Ltd. and Amritsar Development Authority are working but without any favourable results.

Naresh Johar

Make optimum use of taxpayers’ money

The civic authorities should be taken to task for their negligence and indifferent attitude towards public issues. Waterlogging in the city is a perennial problem, especially during the monsoon, and the authorities concerned are fully aware of it. Yet, they deliberately turn a deaf ear to the problem. The need of the hour is to make them responsible and accountable for their apathetic and lackadaisical attitude and approach towards what plagues the city. It is their foremost duty to make preparations well before the onset of the monsoon to deal with the recurrent problem for which they should be held liable. Why don’t they make optimum use of the taxes paid by the general public for the redressal of their grievances? Action should be initiated against the erring officials who put the public issues on the back burner. The problem can’t arise if drainage master plans are prepared with short, medium, long-term and periodic strategies to augment storm water infrastructure in the city. Vulnerable and high risk areas should be identified well in time to prepare an effective monsoon action plan for those areas. A nodal authority ought to be formulated, wholly solely responsible for city storm water management. People should not be allowed to dig up roads without the prior permission of a competent authority. The residents should lend support to the municipal corporation to curb such acts as accomulated water becomes a breeding ground for mosquitoes that spread diseases like malaria, dengue, chickengunia etc. Sewers should be cleaned before the monsoon hits the city.

Tarsem S Bumrah

Make erring officials accountable

It’s a familiar story every monsoon, just a few hours of rains and our big cities get inundated. The urban horror story is made worse by the fact that huge amount of money are spent on advertising desilting city drains every year. In fact with Covid related restrictions in place this year, there was hope to do better job of preparing for monsoon rains. But even when monsoon was quite delayed, streets were flooded after just a few spells of heavy rains. Many blame unplanned urbanisation and too much construction for waterlogging, which of course is true but it’s not a problem that can be fixed in a few months. Some improvement is possible by upgrading storm water drain designs. Current drain designs take into account only of one or two years flood levels, this must change so that drains can cater to greater volume of run-off from heavier showers in short bursts. It makes a good sense to make city storm water management a part of larger infrastructure development policies such as Smart City mission. The civic authorities and municipal administration be made accountable for their negligence and lack of serious attitude through the ward councillors. But just leaving this only to the MC, appears to be clearly not working. Councillors can play a very vital part in this regard if they are informed about the problems being faced by the residents of the area. Regular and timely feedback to the Municipal authorities can always yield encouraging dividends.

LJ Singh

Civic authorities must be taken to task

The civic authorities need to be blamed for their negligence and indifferent attitude towards public issues. Even a spell of two-hour rain leaves areas of our city inundated causing great hardships to residents. Since the past many years, lack of proper drainage system during the rainy season had led to waterlogging in areas, resulting in big potholes on roads leading to accidents. The apathy of our city is continuing since past many years and certainly time has come that civic authorities should be taken to task for their negligence and indifferent attitude towards public issues.

Sanjay Chawla

Unplanned urbanisation reason behind mess

The early signs of monsoon season raised the anxiety of residents in some flood-prone areas of the city. It is a pity that city roads get flooded even after a short spell of rain. Although the problem turns acute every passing year, the corporation has been unable to find a solution. The civic body did take up the annual exercise of cleaning up some stretches of the major drains and sewers in the city. But these works taken up in bits and pieces have never been comprehensive enough to tackle the problem. Cities are expanding and engulfing the open areas which were major drainage points or forests in the past. We see this happening in most of the cities in Punjab. So, when there are excessive rains, cities are not able to drain the water and hence many areas get inundated. The Municipal Corporation plays a critical role in the decision making of a city’s master plan and directing its growth with the support of urban planners. Urban planning intends to make a city function efficiently, by marking layouts and zones in a city, designing networks of mobility, water supply, electricity, sanitation and drainage. Sometimes the focus of making efficient cities overshadows conserving its natural resources. To accommodate a growing city’s population or cater to real estate greed the natural repositories are converted into buildings, roads or transport systems. So, these climate and human events superimpose on bad urban planning which has slowly engulfed environmental resources while building more and more.

Parampreet Kaur

Adopt rainwater harvesting systems

Vehicles wading through puddles of water that form on the city’s potholed roads, faulty sewerage lines that are not desilted even ahead of the monsoons, the lack of rainwater harvesting systems and inadequate planning and action to regulate the city’s infrastructure, are not new to Amritsar, the city of the Golden Temple and Jallianwala Bagh. Irrespective of its religious and historical significance, the Amritsar Municipal Corporation does little to ensure that the city is well-equipped with adequate civic amenities at all time. The historical sites within the walled city area and the low-lying areas nearby are the worst-affected by their indifference. The condition of the posh areas too isn’t any better especially during the monsoon season. Though the municipal authorities claim to be doing their best for the city, the briefest spell of rain is sufficient to expose the veracity of their proclamations. The story of negligence is decades’ old and is repeated every time it rains in the city. It’s high time that the government took the negligent officials to task for their negligence and indifference towards issues of public interest.

Shaheen P Parshad

Erring officials must be penalised

Every year we see the visuals of heavily inundated roads during the monsoon season. The Heritage Street, which is a big tourist attraction, was waterlogged a few days back. The same problem is there on many prominent locations around the city. This sends a very bad message to the tourists visiting the city who further spread it through word-of-mouth with their friends and relatives. The erring officials in civic authorities must be penalised heavily for this grave inaction as they are not doing their duties efficiently.

Jatinderpal Singh Batth

Set up SPV to clean city drains

Waterlogged roads and overflowing sewers have become a common sight every year during the monsoon. Given the unprecedented expansion of the city over the past few years and rising threat of climate change, the civic body should construct underground rainwater storage tanks at critical points to considerably reduce waterlogging. A special purpose vehicle (SPV) should be set up to clean the city’s drains and prevent waterlogging on roads. The city’s municipal corporation should ensure prompt remedial action in case of drainage congestion and must be well-equipped to deal with any eventuality on account of heavy rain. Deploying smart water management tools could also be effective in tackling the problem of waterlogging as these would interpret statistics from water-logged points and provide a holistic picture with robust real-time analytics. In the long-run, building rules and codes must also emphasise on storm water use wherever possible.

Akash Kumar

Punish contractors, erring officials

Every year, the unpreparedness of the Municipal Corporation (MC) causes untold misery to the public at large for which the MC and contractors are responsible. Awakened media and the public must make both of them accountable for the situations in the monsoon season caused due to their negligence and apathy. The guilty contractors should be fined heavily and blacklisted so that they realise their responsibility. They should be asked to redo the faulty work on their own expenses. The corporation staff cannot be absolved of its responsibility to take quality work from the contractors. Disciplinary action be taken against them if found guilty and according to the charges be suspended, their increments be withheld, made personally responsible for not getting required work on time and deductions made from their salary to compensate for the losses incurred. Corruption is at the base of all the malady and both the parties to it must be charged and punished for it.

ANIL KHANNA

Tall claims of MC fall flat every year

• Every year before the advent of monsoon, the civic administration makes tall claims of being well-equipped to deal with any eventuality. The reports on the other hand present an extremely dismal picture. What to talk of heavy rainfall, even due to mild showers, roads are submerged with water and huge potholes appear at many places. Quite often, sewer pipes get choked and manholes are left uncovered
• Such negligence on the part of the MC staff not only causes severe traffic ordeals to public but fatal accidents. People living in congested localities where basic facilities such as proper drainage system and sanitation are lacking are at a higher risk of infection during waterlogging conditions
• It is really amazing that nowadays when technology provides almost accurate weather forecasting, officials responsible for maintenance and upkeep of the infrastructure do not pay timely attention to the warning bells. While the citizens are bearing all kind of taxes, they cannot be left to suffer the unpleasant incidents merely by tagging it to the vagaries of inclement weather. The civic authorities must be held accountable and punished for indifferent attitude and carelessness towards such vital issues of public interest Nirmaljit Singh Chatrath

QUESTION

India’s performance at the Olympics has been best so far as it won highest number of medals ever, clinching the first gold in athletics and finishing on podium in men’s hockey after 41 years. Do you think the governments (Centre and states) are doing enough to support players and what steps should they take to take India to the top-10 in the medal tally at the 2024 Paris Olympics?

Suggestions in not more than 200 words can be sent to amritsardesk@tribunemail.com by Thursday (August 13)