Mumbai witnessed heavy rainfall and waterlogging on Tuesday. (Express Photo By Ganesh Shirsekar) Each of the nine administrative wards in the island city of Mumbai is set to get an emergency flood recovery vehicle to tackle waterlogging during the monsoon and to clean the city’s enclosed underground drain network in the non-monsoon months. The island city extends between A ward and the F/North ward, from Colaba to Mahim, Matunga and Wadala.
Mounted with suction machines and high-capacity dewatering pumps, the nine vehicles will be procured at a cost of Rs 108 crore, which includes their operation and maintenance for a period of eight years. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) issued tenders earlier this month and is likely to procure the vehicles within three months.
In the dry months between October and May, the machines will be used for cleaning the drains, acting like vacuum cleaners. During the monsoon months, the dewatering pumps will be used in emergencies, to pump out water quickly in case of extensive waterlogging.
Unlike the suburbs, which have an extensive network of open stormwater drains (nullahs), the island city has a network of 70 km of underground British-era drains. A senior civic official said, “With the largely open drain network in the suburbs, cleaning becomes easier with Poclain machinery, but there needs to be a full-proof effective mechanism for the closed drains of the island city. It has proved challenging in the city area. These machines have high-capacity suction pumps for vacuuming the inside of drains for accumulated garbage, muck and silt. After the first batch of nine vehicles, BMC will procure more for areas in the suburbs that also have closed drains, over the next couple of years.”
This is not the first time that the BMC is exploring the use of advanced technology for cleaning the British-era drains in South Mumbai. In 2019, the civic body hired three robotic machines for cleaning closed drains in the island city but they did not give the desired result and were put out of use a year later.